Comments on: Strategy boss: Listening to hardcore audience has killed RTS sales

By: cachucha

cachucha — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 22:14:02 +0000

what a tard, make good games and dont blame the “harcore” testers

By: Tonka

Tonka — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:05:14 +0000

Anyone else remember that Genre Theory from about 2 years ago?

By: Freek

Freek — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:41:57 +0000

First you slam the genre, then you say “Yes but our game is different”. People still buy into that?

By: patlike

patlike — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:26:34 +0000

*shudder*

By: Truk

Truk — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:21:09 +0000

Complex?! He should try playing an SSG strategy game.

By: patlike

patlike — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:28:51 +0000

Frank O’Connor’s an ex-journo. He was at Bungie for ages as the “mouthpiece”. He’s on the Halo team at Microsoft now. I shared a room with him at my first E3, in 1999. Funny fucker.

You’re right about the EA/Ubi thing, and I don’t think it’s come to a head yet. Everyone seems more concerned about Acti-EA, but I think EA has far more parallels with Ubisoft.

The problem with the PR point there is that it’s only really in the build up to release that journalists are given “open” access to developers at events. And that’s when all the best quotes come out.

By: Whizzo

Whizzo — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:17:43 +0000

Weird, C&C3 is just as simple as its ever been and it’s the reason why I didn’t think much of it as RTSs have moved on while it hasn’t. It didn’t stop the PC version shipping more than a million copies though and Red Alert is bound to do very well too.

By: Shatner

Shatner — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:10:34 +0000

Yeah, but Kasavin was about the best thing at Gamespot . Bungie have some ex-games journo as their writer/pressmonkey these days too.

Either way, I see these comments more as a PR move for an impending game release than anything else. These guys always start getting chatty just when their game needs to hit the PR zeitgeist.

Oh, and let’s not forget that Ubisoft is seen by many as the ‘answer’ to Electronic Arts – a position that I don’t quite agree on but, were I Ubisoft, I’d exploit the hell out of.

By: patlike

patlike — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:58:36 +0000

When I did my StarCraft II interview at Games Convention, the the guy with Frank Pearce was ex-Gamespot as well.

By: Shatner

Shatner — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:53:51 +0000

Hmm. Not sure how much genuine concern is expressed in this as opposed to “Oh, my game is out any day and I need to grab PR and column space by making incendiary claims”. I’m likely to go with the latter.

In respect of C&C and, in particular, the forthcoming Red Alert 3 there’s a good interview with the game’s producers over at GameSetWatch. Some of it covers the evolution of the gameplay of the series. A good read.

Interesting to see that ex-Gamespot Editor Greg Kasavin is one of the game’s producers.

By: AlbenoEpiX

AlbenoEpiX — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:36:22 +0000

Crikey moses what a misguided twit.

Last I checked, Starcraft was far ahead of the Command and Conquer franchise in terms of complexity and it doesn’t have a particularly narrow audience.

By: Gekidami

Gekidami — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:33:25 +0000

Well as far i as know EndWar had no beta with player feed-back, so his words will be put to the test when RA3 comes out, that game was practically rebuilt on player recommendations while the beta was on.

By: G1GAHURTZ

G1GAHURTZ — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:29:08 +0000

"Listening to feedback from hardcore RTS fans has driven complexity up and sales days in the genre." Complexity up, sales down.

By: Quiiick

Quiiick — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:27:49 +0000

Just tell us when “Ghost Recon: AW3″ is coming, Ubisoft!

By: patlike

patlike — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:21:27 +0000

I’m playing through Dawn of War at the moment. Take a bit of getting used to, but it is awesome. I’m looking forward to EndWar. I had to be shown what to do with it, but once I got used to the commands I loved it.