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XBox (Games)

More Powerhouse Designers on Next-Gen Xbox 83

Posted by Zonk from the throw-a-stick,-hit-a-genius dept.
Just a few days after the announcement that the creator of the Final Fantasy series was joining Microsoft Games Studio, Voodoo Express has the news that more venerable designers will be joining the company. Yoshiki Okamoto and Tetsuya Mizuguchi will be teaming up with Microsoft Games to produce titles for the next generation Xbox. From the article: "Microsoft is now happy to announce that the driving creative minds behind the likes of Resident Evil, Rez, Street Fighter and Space Channel 5 have joined forces with the company to create exciting new titles for the Xbox Next, primarily designed to attract Japanese gamers to the system:"
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More Powerhouse Designers on Next-Gen Xbox More

More Powerhouse Designers on Next-Gen Xbox

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  • Microsoft meddling? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 ) <johnwh AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @04:09PM (#11827337) Homepage
    Will MS let them work and make the games they want to make, which are not always commercially successful, even in Japan?

    Bungie may seem to be instructive, but they're making Halo, arguably the system's saving grace -- it's easier to keep hands off of something which is extremely popular. Even so, I've seen people complain about Halo 2 that the story looks stretched out in order to make a Halo 3 possible. Also remember Rare, who's only released ONE, fairly lackluster, Xbox game since getting bought by Microsoft.

    The temptation to meddle will be great for Microsoft's managers, but if they can overcome that then this is probably excellent news for their new system.
    • I give M$ alot of credit for trying hard. But what they are doing is nothing new. Sony has always acquired creative minds in the industry. They do it so often, they make no public announcement about it.

      If M$ really want to really hog up the video game space, they need to buy companies out with exclusivity. Go buy Capcom, Rockstar, SquareEnix.

      Learn from the EA/Ubisoft ownership problem. You might have stake in the company or have a few famous architects working for you. But unless you claim that comp
    • You haven't seen demos for Conker - Live and Reloaded yet, then, have you? This is an abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous game (except for the big splatters of blood and squirrel vomit that end up on the TV)...
      • This is an abso-fucking-lutely gorgeous game (except for the big splatters of blood and squirrel vomit that end up on the TV)...

        I'm not quite sure what this has to do with my point, but I'll give it a shot.

        Let's see. Conker's Bad Fur Day. Isn't that the remake of the game we've all seen on the N64 a couple of years ago?

        The gorgeousness of a game is not at all related to its quality as a game -- the game I've been playing the most of late has been venerable, almighty Nethack. And with none of these pa

  • What is MS offering that Sony isn't? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MBraynard ( 653724 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @04:09PM (#11827347) Journal
    Why isn't Sony or Nintendo going after these guys? Or are they and did they get out-bid?

    Note that these are individuals that were lured or companies that were wholly the support staff of an individual.

    Also, it isn't clear what is meant by 'aligned' or 'teamed up.' Are they now on staff of MS Games? Are they agreeing to exclusive titles? Or are they just agreeing that anything they make will come out on Xbox along with PS2/3/Nintendo R?

    The only thing to conclude from this is that MS is serious about knocking down the paper door to the Japanese market.

    • Re:What is MS offering that Sony isn't? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @04:39PM (#11827827)
      Seems like the spin doctors have spun "Ted and rob are going to make a game for xbox2" to "Ted and Rob have signedon to make an amazing new project for the xbox2".

    • Re:What is MS offering that Sony isn't? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by PhotoBoy ( 684898 ) on Thursday March 03, 2005 @07:07AM (#11832556)
      I think if MS had secured an exclusive on Capcom games like Resident Evil they'd be telling us that. The whole "joined forces with the company" sounds to me like Mizuguchi and Okamoto are going to executive produce some games. i.e. MS will make the game, and the Capcom guys will then give them suggestions and feedback.

      This could be something similar to Hideo Kojima's interaction with Silicon Knights on Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. If it is like this then it suggests that Capcom have committed their resources to developing primarily on PS3 (and maybe Revolution) and that this is the best deal MS were able to get out of Capcom.

  • I can see it now.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by LordPhantom ( 763327 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @04:18PM (#11827503)
    Thunderhead (or some other "cloud"/"Squall" derivative)
    "Wow - that looks like a save point"
    --
    Would you like to save??
    (YES) (NO)
    --

    Saving...........
    Error: *** Stop: 0x000000 ED (0x86371900, 0xC0000032, 0x00000000, 0x00000000) Microsoft has not paid our fine devlopment staff enough to ensure stability in your shiny new FFXXI game... please reboot to start your game over!

  • Hold off... (Score:4, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @04:24PM (#11827606) Homepage Journal

    Sounds good, but I won't be buying one until Team Xecuter [teamxecuter.com] is designing product for the xbox2.

  • Voodoo Express? (Score:2, Informative)

    by sw33tjimmy ( 662009 )
    I hope that was an intentional screw up. VE might not be the website it once was, but it should at least be known by its rightful name (Voodoo Extreme).

  • Huge article mistakes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @04:41PM (#11827847)
    First, just like others pointed out in the original /. story, Sakaguchi Hironobu-san didn't "join" Microsoft Game Studios, the same way he didn't "join" Nintendo. His studio, Mistwalker, simply announced that they were developing two games for the Xbox's successor, just as they are also working on Nintendo DS software.

    Second, these two venerable designers will not be "joining the company." Zonk's very next sentence almost corrects this, but it is in no way accurate to describe any of these three men as being employed by Microsoft. That would imply things that are not true, such as development exclusivity (which itself implies absolute faith on the part of these men in Microsoft's business model, which has yet to be determined beyond just making games for the Xbox's successor).

    Really guys, you have to be more careful with the way you read Microsoft press releases. "Joined forces with" != "joined." This is the second time /. has made this implication, the first being in the original write-up of similar circumstances with Sakaguchi.

    Finally, meh. It just means that the Xbox's successor will finally offer at least a few more Japanese-style games like those that have been available on PS2 and GameCube for years. These announcements are "hey, us too" affairs, not "booya, in your face Sony and Nintendo" kinds of announcements. After all, both Sony and Nintendo have had/still have good working relationships with all three of these fine developers as I type this. This is about MS catching up, akin to Peter Molyneux saying to Nintendo, "I want to make a GBA game, and you can use my name in your PR." Boring. Next story.
    • "Finally, meh. It just means that the Xbox's successor will finally offer at least a few more Japanese-style games like those that have been available on PS2 and GameCube for years."

      As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing. But I'm not sure it is for Microsoft. I think a fair part of their marketshare is parents worried and confused by their ten-year-old's love of Pokemon and Beyblade getting him a console that doesn't expose him to more quirky and inexplicable Japanese memes. Xbox's white-bread nature

    • Re:Huge article mistakes (Score:4, Informative)

      by fondue ( 244902 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @07:16PM (#11829477)
      Save your breath. Item after item posted by Zonk are riddled with factual errors or simply links to baseless rumours from the most laughably disreputable 'news' sites. They're never corrected or removed.

      Slashdot Games is a joke, and it's only serving to make general /. readers with a casual interest in games MORE ignorant than they were before.

      • Re:Huge article mistakes (Score:5, Informative)

        by Babbster ( 107076 ) <aaronbabb@NOspaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @10:07PM (#11830681) Homepage
        Obviously, the posted article is weak, especially in its links, though also for being regurgitated press release material. That being said, this particular article isn't factually incorrect at all. Of course, the link that SHOULD have been used is this one [microsoft.com] which points at the press release right on Microsoft's own website. (This one [microsoft.com] provides a similar release for the announcement about Sakaguchi referenced by others' comments.)

        While none of the mentioned people are now actually working FOR Microsoft, the fact that they are now being published (and, presumably, at least partially funded) by Microsoft is significant. Smaller developers have only so many resources to devote to projects and the fact that they're developing Xbox Next exclusives is a big deal in that it will be a lot more difficult to simultaneously develop other games for the other various platforms (ask Lionhead about "B.C." and trying to keep too many balls in the air).

  • Wow! I bet they make as many games (Score:5, Funny)

    by the_skywise ( 189793 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @04:56PM (#11828047)
    for the XBox as Rare has!

    Although Conker should be out just in time before the XBox 2 gets released...
  • I dont even have an xbox yet, and now they are putting the finishing touches on xbox 2! ARGH!!!

  • beautiful (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rnd() ( 118781 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @05:49PM (#11828665) Homepage
    It's beautiful how capitalism works. Microsoft's shareholders want to make money, management chooses video games as an avenue, and then puts shareholder dollars to work recruiting the best possible minds. Think of how powerful that is. I can't wait to buy my next gen XBox when they come out.
    • but it doesnt work.

      as many people have pointed out, the great minds (eg rare, bungie) microsoft has recruited in the past have not actually produced any truely quality products since "joinging forces" with microsoft."

      • I think that C#, the first X-Box, SQL Server, and WINNT HAL, are excellent examples of Microsoft bringing in top experts and creating cutting edge technology. Sure there have been some flops, and shareholders ought to hold MS accountable...

        The beauty of capitalism is the way it can at least put the top minds together on a team and let them have a shot at a higher level of excellence.
        • C#
          Ew.

          the first X-Box
          higher level of excellence? Now I'm not saying it sucks, but it's not a higher level of excellence. It's an older pc repackaged into a smaller box, with usb controllers, the first of which were halariously huge. Nothing higher level about it (for better or worse) Seriously, its what any non gaming 45 year old buisness man (if they had ms's credit card # to front the loses of being more costly to produce) would think up. Cut and dry. (Again, not trolling on the xbox, just your views

          • Now I'm not saying it sucks, but it's not a higher level of excellence. It's an older pc repackaged into a smaller box, with usb controllers, the first of which were halariously huge. Nothing higher level about it (for better or worse)

            Why do people insist on comparing the Xbox to a PC? Compare it to it's market competitors; the GameCube and the PlayStation 2. Who the fuck CARES that it's a repacked PC? An average Xbox game still looks and sounds better than a top-flight PS2 or GC game, and that's the

            • An average Xbox game still looks and sounds better than a top-flight PS2 or GC game...

              Umm, bullshit? You might be able to get away with that statement if you left the GC out, but I've not seen anything on the XBox that can compete with Resident Evil 4 graphically -- and that's only one example. ...and that's the important part.

              Umm, wrong. I won't even bother explaining this one.

              --Jeremy
        • Heh, SQL Server (I use 2000 here) isn't all that great.

          I hate the interface, for instance. Whoever made the Enterprise Manager UI should be shot.

          It's completely bizarre. Views can be edited normally, but stored procedures use a modal window. To tweak permissions not only it also uses a modal window, but you can't resize it!

          And it insists on popping up dialogs asking me if I'd like to close the query to conserve resources. No, I wouldn't like to, I've got a testing server all for myself!

          Then opening a bi
          • but the db itself is very fast.
            • No, it's not fast in the conditions I use it. Yeah, it probably works great if you use it as if it was mySQL, but here the workload mainly consists of big transactions, and that results in very crappy concurrency.

              SQL Server doesn't actually support nested transactions, it turns out. Each "begin trans" simply increments a counter, and it's all committed only at the end. This means this big operation, which can easily take a few minutes will end creating a metric ton of locks in several tables, then remove t
              • I'm using postgres in my current project, and asp.net 2.0 (planning on using the mono implementation)...

                I do like mssql, though... I haven't used oracle so my experience is somewhat limited, but considering that Oracle is a db company and MS is a very broad software company, it doesn't seem to be doing too badly.
          • Heh, SQL Server (I use 2000 here) isn't all that great. I hate the interface, for instance. Whoever made the Enterprise Manager UI should be shot.

            Obviously never worked with Oracle eh? I wish there was a tool like Enterprise Manager that shipped with Oracle.

            Wahh. You can't resize the modal window?? Try figuring out the Oracle command in the console and you won't care if SQL server creates a window twice your screen size.
        • space flight (1), the klashnikov series (2) and the beautiful masterpiece that is the st petersburg public transit system (3) are among many of the great advances to come out of communist russia.

          i think the real boon lies in the incredible efficiency of fascism, which is the natural state within a bussiness environment (regardless of outside competitive practices) and is also most applicable to so-called soviet russia.

          my original point was regarding the artistic aspect of games, that subtle design that

          • Hah. Those examples are creative, but it's funny to sing the praises of a system that self-destructed.

            Soviet space flight was reliable only to the extent that its low tech systems were less prone to failure... admittedly that's a valid design approach, but it was not intentional, merely an accident of comparably slow technology growth.

            I don't see how rifles are relevant.

            I do not know when the basic design of transit in St. Petersburg was designed. It could have been designed prior to the Soviets. In t
            • the bolsheviks designed the st petersburg public transit system, and it works beautifully, you can get anywhere in the entire city in 6-10 minutes. in the city i live here in the US, the transit system is privatized, and it usually takes longer to ride the bus somewhere than to simply walk there. but thats just a neat fact, praising the glory of st petersburg, heh... actually, most of the things the bolsheviks did were really incredible.

              but the railways used to belong to a whole bunch of campanies, didnt

              • You are welcome to start a company to compete with Halliburton, as is everyone else. Not to defend Halliburton, but it's really the government's job to write contracts that demand high quality services, etc. We are not demanding enough of our elected officials, and so they do occasionally create bad policy.

                Imagine if the railroads were sold, real-estate and all, and private companies were allowed to build private highways in their place. For a subscription fee (or tolls) you'd be able to drive 120 MPH i
                • No one would insure a private company using that business model, especially if speeds were unrestricted. Also, maintaining safety requires some sort of policing. With the large initial cost and the relatively small profit after maintenance costs, no company would touch this idea. There are better ways to invest your money.

                  You have too much faith in the free market. The market is a mechanism that is intended to reward people who excel at something. It achieves this goal... sometimes. In an ideal world, the
                  • You have said that nobody should trust anything, but you haven't suggested how policy ought to be created. Of course, politicians want you to believe that markets don't work so that you will give them the power to fix them. You seem to have bought into that ideology.

                    Markets are markets. They act to optimize resource allocation, nothing more, nothing less. You may not like the outcome, just as you may not always enjoy the effect of gravity, but both are rules of the universe, not ideologies.

                    The questi
                • its government policy to simply give projects to the highest bidder (actually lowest bidder, the organization who say they can do it cheapest). no other aspects come under consideration. the only goal is to get the job done as cheap as possible.

                  most of the subscription services ive every applied for have been all show and no substance. the only reliable and consistant things i pay for come from large companies with virtually no competition, such as Puget Sound Energy, or Comcast (there is no reasonable al

                  • Think about what you said. "when there is competition, there is always a reduction in quality to decrease prices and remain competitive".

                    if consumers demand lower prices, then of course companies will do what it takes to compete for business while offering lower prices... similarly, if people demand higher quality, companies will compete on that front. It's not a failure of capitalism, it's a success. Imagine an economy in which the only cars available were Rolls Royces and nobody could get a car unless
    • Sakaguchi's fading, if not already completely spent. Okamoto has as far as I can tell from his credits, absolutely nothing to do with the creative process, and is a talking head. Mizuguchi is the only coup in the bunch so far, and you can't really call it a coup, because this isn't recruiting...it's RENTING.

      These guys aren't working for Microsoft. They're working for their own companies, and are helming *1 or 2* exclusive XBox2 projects. Honestly, I thought people here would know better...but I guess th

      • Capitalism is indeed beautiful...just like the free agency market in sports is...from the standpoint of the free agent only.

        Not at all. Capitalism is beautiful because someone is paying the cost of the talent and benefitting... in baseball that is typically the team's owner and shareholders. Fans also benefit because they choose to watch games, buy tickets, etc.
  • Most people get recruited by being given a parallel or higher responsibility. These two are successful businessmen in the video games industry. I can't imagine they're going to get into the nitty-gritty, but instead anticipate executive producing. The important thing to consider is what kind of teams they will pull together. They will most likely recruit Japanese video game engineers, so there's your real impact.

  • Designed to Attract Japanese Gamers... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GaryPatterson ( 852699 ) on Wednesday March 02, 2005 @06:06PM (#11828828)
    Wow. Games designed primarily to attract certain people.

    I bet we'll see anime-style characters, with huge eyes, tiny mouths and weird icons appearing next to them to indicate emotions. Maybe they'll have special moves like flying or fireballs. Who can tell?

    But what's next? When we're targeting specific groups with games, why not design games for other groups? How about a game set in the US 'hoods with streetwise urban R&B African Americans vying for top spot on a rap chart. Or maybe target that lucrative Hispanic market with a game based around getting out of Cuba or from South America into the good old US of A.

    I can see it now. Commitees set up to determine the makeup of focus groups, who in turn will be asked for all the features they want in a game. And then the designer will collate those features and pump out code and artwork, and hey presto! Another demographic added to the score.

    Heaven forfend that a designer might have their own ideas or goals. They are subservient to their masters now - the focus groups, the demographic, the marketing people.

    I can't wait to see more gaming ideas put up by marketing people. After all - we all know they have the best ideas, and they'll make the best games.

    Remember Poochy from The Simpsons?
  • Looks like a good plan to me, using a popular japanese brand to attract consumers for the XBOX. Looks like MS is still up to it's devilish ways. I mean haven't they conquered enough yet?

  • The title. (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by schild ( 713993 )
    The most important thing in this article is the title of the Xbox Next. It's not the 360, it's the Xbox Next. No one would name their system the 360. It's just too goddamned stupid.
  • I'm sure I will be marked a troll again for saying this as it seems a lot of people on slashdot games are a little sensitive about their Xbox, but it needs to be said. This won't change things. The Xbox2 won't sell in Japan. Nothing short of MS having a Japanese company sell their console in the land of the rising sun under their own name will change this. The Japanese won't by large buy and American made video game system.
    • just as japan rejects american films, american music, american-made computer components, software, aircraft, american pop-culture... american baseball... Japan is not snobbish toward the states. Not sure if that's what you were implying or not. The xbox was just big, ugly, and the competition had better/more games. Releasing Kung-Fu Chaos over there probably didn't help MS's Far-Eastern cause, either.

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