Sup

I'm sure some of the people at Ubisoft studios want to produce niche games, and i agree that the scenario where development houses like red storm and ubisoft montreal take more risky creative moves would be ideal for them and for us. But, that said, how would Publisher Ubisoft reducing their market, and their profits dramatically be anything for those businessmen to brag about? Find me a niche developer making anywhere near the money ubisoft is this year. Some niche and indie developers are making really cool games -- Kings bounty, AI war, Telltale's throwback 80s and early 90s style adventure games, the ultra difficult, very tactical Men of War out of russia, super creative distinctly japanese games out of the east, like No More Heroes (which ubisoft is actually publishing in some territories) and MadWorld (surprisingly by another super sized publisher, Capcom)... But none of these games are making near as much money as ubisoft's products. So i can definitely understand why the corporate side of ubiosoft wants to stay on their course. And, at the risk of slightly undermining my point, i'd like to remind you that Ubisoft isnt exactly avoiding all creative risks. Even design decisions you may not agree with that they've recently made have been groundbreaking -- The hybrid third person/first person system in Vegas, which was risky but a hit with consumers, the painterly unique storybook artstyle of the last Prince of Persia, the new and never before seen tactical streamlining of Splinter Cell, with the potentially too simple but undeniably innovative mark and execute system, Far Cry 2, (a game i personally see as a huge failure design wise)'s unique status as an open world first person stealth shooter. Or HAWX, being essentially two flight models in one, and allowing the players to switch between them at will in a rock/paper/scissors design strategy. Assasins creed playing super-tight lipped with the spoilers, and not announcing its sci fi setting until the day of release. Some of these ideas are pretty stupid, i think, but they're definitely creative and unique. Ubisoft may be a company that's way too focused on sales vs quality, but they can't really be accused of shying away from creative risks and innovative design.

Infinity ward, yes, but bungie isnt a great example of getting games out on time. All three halo games have been delayed (i believe? it may have been that halo3 never got a solid date and publications thought it was delayed when it was announced to be lather than expected) -- halo 2 most notably had its entire development restarted right before it was initially supposed to come out. Fantastic developers can still completely bungle projects for a multitude of reasons. Learning to make consistent games on a schedule is obviously a goal every studio should have, but very few actually demonstrate achieving it. I am curious about why Ubisoft's games fail to get out the door on time so consistently, though. It's important to keep in mind that there isnt exactly one unified 'ubisoft' entitiy involved here -- there's the development studio, Ubisoft Montreal, and then there's the big corporate publisher side of ubisoft. Just like when Ubi was publishing a game for Grin or Red Storm, it's very likely the developers and producers have sometimes conflicting goals, despite being part of the same overarching company. Are the development sides of Ubisoft inefficient? Hard to believe offhand, considering the quality of games they're known for releasing, but definitely plausible. It would be interesting to hear who's decision this was, beyond the super vague 'ubisoft'.

Dozens in the last six years. A few have been massive disasters but for the most part ubisoft dominated the console holiday market in 06/07/08. I know you aren't a console gamer, but for a lot of people it felt like Ubisoft and Capcom were the only companies releasing games for a few years there. Ubisoft was on a massive finanical upswing for years. Most of these games sold EXTREMELY well, or were met with critical acclaim. Look up console sales numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_in_A...Earned_in_Blood an oct 05 release http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassin's_Creed_(series) nov 07, nov 09 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy's_Splinter_Cell nov 02, and an oct 06 release http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naruto_video_games Naruto games on a lot of recent holidays -- i dont think these sold that great, but i have no idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_in_Conflict WIC, this is a pc one, sep 07 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Messiah_of_Might_and_Magic Dark messiah was an 0ct 06 release. to my knowledge it did poorly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Cry_2 FC2 was an oct release. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Per...e_Sands_of_Time Prince of persia games in fall/winter 03, 04, 05, 08 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy...nbow_Six:_Vegas vegas in holidays 06 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayman_Raving_Rabbids Rabbids games, holiday wii releases. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Steel Red steel, holiday 06 wii release, to my knowledge did poorly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy's_EndWar End war, holiday 08. Edit: more importantly! Serellan, is that the halo reach box in your signature? Hell yes, excitement +10 for it. The design in your team based multiplayer games is always stand out superb, i can't wait to see what you and the rest of the bungie team is cooking up.

Ouch, yeah, was just coming here to post this in the other thread. Not looking good for ubisoft this year, now that these numbers are out. It's not quite fair to say they haven't put games out in the holiday season -- iirc they did in 08. Almost no publishers wanted to run their games against Modern Warfare 2 this last year, everyone pushed back their holiday titles. To a point where gaming publications started joking about Christmas 09 -- coming in q1 20010. It's interesting to see that Assasins creed, and for that matter every one of their big name, AAA console titles in the last several years, sold great, beating projections... And yet they revised their numbers down dramatically. Regardless of their development side, something is ######ed up in their business model. They seem to be putting a lot of money year after year into the sinking ship of their DS and WII titles.

Seems silly to me. They're copying EA, who has a similar overarching point system in their games -- except for ea it's sports games, and it kinda makes sense to win a throwback jersey or special boxing gloves or whatever. Ubisoft primarily deals in shooters and action games, i cant see this integrating smoothly.

http://www.ubisoftgroup.com/index.php?p=59...mlsdGVyX3llYXI9 Ubisoft has released some ######ty games recently, but i'm not sure you quite understand the numbers here. Ubisoft projected these kinds of sales, and it's largely based on the fact that ubisoft did not release any big name games in the first half of 09/010, compared to a blockbuster year in 08/09. Now, pay attention to this part: No telling if that'll actually come to pass, but until it does it would be absolutely ridiculous to say ubisoft is doing poorly as a company. Their plan for 09/010 was to coast through the first half with losses and release their big name games (prince of persia, assassins creed, splinter cell, ruse, red steel, etc) in the second half. If the second half meets ubi's planned sales projections as well as the first half did, ubisoft is in for a fantastic year. Also, it's worth mentioning their market share hasnt really changed at all. Grown a bit some places, shrunk a bit others. Now, don't get me wrong, UNLESS UBISOFT MEETS THESE SALES PROJECTIONS, THEY WILL BE IN TROUBLE. But there's no reason to speculate that they will not meet them. So far, everything has gone in line with the plan Yves proposed. In fact, the only of their planned moneymaking games reported on so far, Assassins creed 2, sold fantastically: 1.6 million in the first week. Time will tell if Avatar, Splinter Cell, Red Steel, and the other big titles also do as well as they hope.

A felony conviction can never really be called a slap on the wrist.

Touche, if that stuff always bothered you i can see why ubisoft choosing to escalate that stuff (sam fisher's combat/takedown ability) even more turned you off to it.

I don't want to argue this point to death, but seriously, you dont see Sam as very superhuman? One hit knockouts, the ability to completely immobilize someone from behind with one arm around their neck, insta kill super magic knife in chaos theory that prevents its victims from screaming, the ability to *walljump* and hang from ledges forever, super high tech thermal goggles... With the exception of the goggles and the knife, that's all stuff i have direct personal experience with (boxing and jiujitsu) and it sure as hell is not within the capability of the world's most athletic 50 yearold man. Get a friend and try and put a chokehold on him, see how still you can keep him while you point your arm over his shoulder to aim like sam does. Find a narrow hallway and try to prop yourself up in the top of it. I'd dare that sam fisher's new superhero gunslinging heroics are *more* realistic than the existing herculean climbing, grappling and hand to hand skills. And this new game doesnt really look much like a third person cover shooter to me. Not any more than sc1 was -- you can use cover, but it doesnt exactly look like the most viable way to take guys out. Melee stealth kills and the new mark and execute long range stealth kills look about the same as sniping and koing guys in the old games. Just more stylishly animated. There's a definite focus on staying in the shadows and planning your actions in this new game too, by the looks of it, your actions just happen a little faster when you get down to doing them.

Honestly, how does this not look awesome to you guys? Splinter cell, from the start, was action movie style stealth -- stylishly grounded in reality, but focusing on the exploits of a superhuman, super aggressive covert operative. Now instead of relying on the top 2% of gamers who are extremely fast with their mouse and good at videogames to have the intended '24' flavour, ubisoft has built an entire system of new, seemingly pretty innovative (i play a lot of games and havent seen this) gameplay system to encourage the kind of stylish heroics Sam Fisher is shown doing in cutscenes and promotional material. Nobody is ever going to claim Conviction is the world's most realistic spy game, but it doesnt look any less realistic than Splinter Cell -- and it looks a hell of a lot more accessible, deep, and stylish.

The RockPaperShotgun WIT review compared this to the Delta Force games above ghost recon or ofp. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/08...-dragon-rising/ It sounds accurate from what i've seen of videos, it looks a LOT like df2 in basic movement/combat style. Can anyone here who's played jointops or df weigh in?

Because this hasnt been done successfully several hundred times, or anything. It's a mess, and i think it's the second one microsoft has caused in the last 3-4 years? Last time they gave some arcade games away free for a few weeks as an apology.

Awesome! Visaully it looks atrocious, but coming from tripwire those gameplay ideas are incredibly promising.

As with OFP, the squad conrols are REALLY quirky. Arma's AI was outright broken. Arma2's is fantastic, as long as you know how to wrangle them into doing what you want. It's actually too detailed, and way too abstract, it makes me wish for a graw like system so i could explain it easier when trying to introduce my friends to it. Giving targets (but hold fire!) carefully managing the engage (move to fire;) and disengage (return to original movement order) commants so your machinegunners dont run off and get shot before they can start firing. Carefully managing the combat mode (danger! so they dont get slaughtered -- but watch them completely prioritize hiding over following your oders if you give it!) move orders to get them going in general direction, but orders like Engage and Advance to get them to leave semi-safe points... It's kindof a mess. But it's a mess you can do great things with if you get used to it. Maybe it's supposed to simulate forging trusting relationships with your suboordinates. also, holding right click zooms (in or out of sights), tapping enters iron sights. And the alt key! It's a lifesaver, use it while sprinting and reloading to get orders issued and an idea of the battlefield.

Ubisoft rarely uses motion capture, actually -- very minimally next to other developers. They animate by hand with keyframing, much to their credit. As for eurphoria, yes! It's awesome. Grand Theft auto 4 used it (i think, maybe a competitor) quite extensively.

I just noticed that it going to be available on Steam. One question though, in ArmA we used different shortcuts for different servers and mods (ie the command line had different such as @Klurs etc). How will this be handled through Steam seeing as you have to start the game with steam running? (Probably a silly question with an easy answer but I've not used Steam a lot and certainly not with any mods). You know, i honestly have no idea. You can add custom shortcuts to your steam list, i imagine you'll just have to do that. Noquarter, it's a slider. Putting it around 80% avoids the weird muddy blurriness and works okay, that's how i'm running it right now, i dont mind a little aliasing though.

on amd 64 x2 4200+ Geforce 8600 2 gigs of ram it runs fantastically smooth on low settings -- but it looks amazing on low, better than Arma, as long as you have shadows on at all the lighting model is just fantastic. The engine does something a bit unusual, becoming a little more common, which i don't like at all: Fillrate optimizer. It goes from 50-200; and what it does is render more or less of the screen than the resolution you're using, and upscale or downscale it to your chosen dimensions. Basically, if you turn it down, it makes your screen a blurry mess at the benefit of a framerate, and if you turn it up, it butchers your FPS for a AA like effect. As for polish, this is a far more polished game than Arma is now, or OFP was at release, with the 1.01 beta patch. Wait for the steam version, you'll be pleased.

in codemasters' defense, it looks fun -- like farcry 2 with a squad. But not ofp.

with 1.01, not really. It's less buggy than release arma, and the AI improvements are great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-7DdBQGhxA gameplay as expected it's a nice, open shooter, probably room for some fun tactics, but nothing of the realism in ARMA2. He spends quite a while hanging out in the open trading shots with a machinegun nest that doesnt seem too intent on killing the player.

A little bit of both, probably. The industry is quickly moving toward a focus on smaller, easier to develop projects. Expect a much larger ratio of small casual or indie games to big blockbuster AAA games. I'm sure the breed of big budget halos and Call of Dutys wont die out, i'd just expect to see a lot less competition for the top dogs in the games industry. The financial climate just isnt right for risking that much capital on unproven developers. Interestingly Blackfoot Studios' focus on Sky Gods instead of Ground Branch is an example of the kind of thinking that's getting pretty common -- better to pay a small team to make a small game than to try and get massive investments for a huge risk, in these times.

But so far it's only announced for the xbox -- probably another 'timed exclusive' bought by MS

There are some bits of gameplay in their trailers -- it looks much faster, tighter, and more streamlined than Arma2 -- very much like console GRAW still looks promising, just maybe not for the most obsessively sim-minded

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-splinter-cell/50194 -better video this looks fantastic. A departure from the roots of splinter cell, i'm sure there will be some moaning about lack of realism, but this looks like it's going to nail the action movie/24 style spy motif way better than any game before it. For what it is, it looks ace. Splinter cell's old gameplay was starting to wear a bit thin after 40 missions, anyway

As if on cue; Deadline Games files for bankruptcy more bad news out of europe, deadline games closes its doors.