If only the title ended with a 3 instead of a 4, I'd agree with you! This one is still great though, and I agree, an absolute classic. Chessa and I never did finish this one though, so we'll need to get back to that at some point. We got very close to the end, just lost steam, I guess.
Look! A power switch! This was a pretty smart video to make, IMO. At least from the unboxing, the One doesn't seem drastically different from the Xbox 360. That should earn some mindshare with the hardcore crowd.
Also, it begs the question - is the Kinect 2.0 absolutely necessary? I'm kind of guessing not and I'm wondering if we'll eventually see a unit that doesn't feature one. At this point, the only requirement for it is on the OS side which could be changed in a system update. I will say that their complete reversal on policy is pretty funny. I guess they didn't have the balls to stick with their original plan. Heck, it might've even paid off for them!
John Carmack is great. If nothing else, the guy is a genius programmer and I love hearing what he has to say about pretty much anything related to the field, whether it's related to games or not. I find it fascinating that he is using Lisp and Haskell for something related to the game engine. I need to delve more into that to find out exactly what he's doing. Lisp isn't exactly an easy language and having done it in college, I have a hard time imagining its applicability in a middleware product.
Also, having owned none of The Elder Scrolls games, I'm pretty interested in that boxed set. I'll probably hold out for a price drop, but I could see grabbing that when it hits $40.
No doubt, I think this one is going to get rare. Since the review code Atlus provided was digital, I'm going to have to double dip here and get myself a physical copy + art book. Definitely worth it, I think.
This game is definitely "denser" than past titles. I'm also playing Muramasa Rebirth right now and this game understands how to pack a lot more content into a much smaller space. I think it's the layering of systems that really makes Dragon's Crown so appealing. Muramasa is great, but it's kind of a one trick pony. Once you master the combat system, it's just trudging through until you get to the next (awesome) boss fight.
No worries, sir, I'm confident in saying that this one is better. I'm almost willing to say that it's the best work this team has done, but I haven't played their stuff that was never localized. I definitely enjoyed it more than Muramasa, Odin Sphere, and GrimGrimoire.
Management has definitely screwed up on it, but I get the feeling that it has a lot to do with resting on their laurels after the smash success of both the DS and the Wii. I think they skated into the 3DS launch, got their asses handed to them and scrambled to get stuff in gear. In that scramble, the Wii U got left in the dust. Now that they've had time to get the 3DS on track and have had some breathing room, I'm hoping their next assault is on the flagging Wii U software library.
As far as first party goes, things look pretty strong going into the holidays and straight into 2014, but they need to get third parties on board if they expect to bank on that momentum. Regardless of what happens, I think that with enough strong first party software they'll be fine and eventually all of the hold outs will grab up a Wii U for the stuff they can't play elsewhere.
At least going into this holiday season, I'm most excited for Wii U software. We'll see what happens beyond that, but I think that they are well-positioned for the holidays, especially if they can throw down with a meaty price cut.
No doubt, those are some terrible numbers, but they also speak to the fact that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has hit the Wii U in recent months. I think this holiday Nintendo will pick up some lost ground. If they're smart, they're gearing up for a large marketing campaign and a potential price cut or bundle to start boosting the system.
There's a lot of good software on the horizon and stuff that should be capable of moving systems. Hopefully they start recruiting more of the Japanese development market and carve out a niche for themselves that Sony and Microsoft aren't really aiming for with their next gen machines. I'm not giving up hope on the system, I'm just crossing my fingers that the management there are seeing the lay of the land and grabbing up the market they can serve best.
