Xbox and pc's "5 biggest secret games"

Chasym

Chasym

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Chasym Toloren
>> From the "press release" about the "5 biggest secret games" being developed for the Xbox360 - full details will be in the April issue of the US Official Xbox Magazine:
Agents Scully and Mulder are no match for the Xbox 360's "X-files" report. Only Official Xbox Magazine can declassify the five biggest games coming out for the console that "the man" doesn't want you to know about:

* 5: Hellgate: London- This action-RPG, in which a gate to Hell has ripped open in London in 2028, is filled with massive skill customization, paper-doll character tweakage and disturbingly addictive dungeon-crawling treasure hunts. The game is possibly being kept under wraps to let it bask in the Windows limelight for awhile.

* 4: Crimson Skies 2- The original, underdog Xbox game Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge is just popular enough to give a sequel the green light. Xbox 360 doesn't want you to know about the new game yet as a matter of timing; they need to keep some bullets in their chamber for next year.

* 3: Duke Nukem Forever- The 10-years-in-the-making sequel to the 1996 industry- defining hit Duke Nukem 3D can finally meet its goals now that technology is available that will help the game redefine first-person-shooter interactivity like its predecessor. Game developer 3D Realms is probably keeping it hush hush until they pin down a release date for the PC version.

* 2: Star wars: Knights Of The Old Republic III- Developer Bioware dropped the hammer on the rest of the RPG world when it made the original Knights of the Old Republic. The game is arguably one of the best Star wars video games and warrants a third installment in its series of follow-ups. Official Xbox Magazine has a sneaking suspicion that they are working on III, but aren't letting the cat out of the bag yet as not to derail hype for other current projects.

* 1: World of Warcraft: Azeroth Adventures- Eight million PC gamers paid $50 to own the original World of Warcraft, plus another $15/month to play it. Now, the Xbox 360 version is expected to be its own animal, not a pared down version of the PC game. It seems Microsoft will keep dumping cash on Blizzard's (the developer) doorstep until they agree to create a custom-built-for-360 version of the game. Rumor has it that it will debut for the 2008 holiday season
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3: Duke Nukem Forever- The 10-years-in-the-making sequel to the 1996 industry- defining hit Duke Nukem 3D can finally meet its goals now that technology is available that will help the game redefine first-person-shooter interactivity like its predecessor. Game developer 3D Realms is probably keeping it hush hush until they pin down a release date for the PC version.
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I was highly doubting we would ever see this game
 
I may eat my own words, but I don't think WoW is getting any console ports. The developers have said no to it over and over again fearing it would restrict their options for future updates development wise. I'm sure Microsoft could just buy Blizzard if they wanted, but is an Xbox 360 port going to be worth the expense? Seems like more they could with that money.
 
I'm with firestreak on the xbox 360 WoW. Cautiously pesimistic. I'm not entirely convinced it would make it past focus groups without integration. Stand alone on the console i've really gotta wonder if there's enough of an audience left that isn't fully aware or already involved in WoW as it is.

If you ask me the console companies should be pushing more in house or third party MMOs that are new to the market or exclusive instead of ports and PC/Console integrations but that's just my opinion.
 
Hellgate: London isn't really secret, it's been in magazines and online for a while. And Duke Nukem is just a game that is getting left in the dust by better FPS games every 6 months. I bet they have to retool so it doesn't end up feeling dated when compared to better games.
 
Firestreak said:
I may eat my own words, but I don't think WoW is getting any console ports. The developers have said no to it over and over again fearing it would restrict their options for future updates development wise. I'm sure Microsoft could just buy Blizzard if they wanted, but is an Xbox 360 port going to be worth the expense? Seems like more they could with that money.
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Well, they can't buy Blizzard, because Blizzard is currently owned by Vivendi. Which is why a good chunk of their original team left to form their own company, which is making Hellgate: London.

A console version isn't too far fetched. They could do what SOE did and make a seperate MMO, like EQ and EQOA


As for Duke Nukem Forever - Right.. I'll believe it when I actually see word from 3D Realms.
 
Wow, I might lose a 5 year old bet about Duke Nukem: Forever. And to think, I had such a long run of winning. I should expect a phone call asking for $20 any time now lol
 
So, will the 360 version be seperate from the regular version of WoW? No one is going to play that.

I've been waiting for Crimson Skies 2 since the first one came out. I loved that game.

I had honestly forgotten about Duke Nukem. I used to think this was just some wild rumor that everyone wanted to believe was true. Jesus will have his second coming before this game gets its first. I'm pretty sure your $20 is safe, Lan.
 
lolVaporWare anyone?

If duke nukem forever comes out i'll eat my little tarutaru shoes.
 
They could release WoW as a seperate game on 360. There could be a seperate server for 360 players even and I'm sure it would do just fine, I wouldn't even be going out on a limb as saying it would probably be more successful then FFXI across all its platforms.

As long as they don't hold technology back for the PC players on the PC servers. Blizzard might be willing to do what SquareEnix was too fucking lazy/poor to do and actually make their servers seperated. They have already done it with NA and EU servers, I'm sure its not far fetched to make NA-360 and EU-360 servers.

Remember, a game only has to sell a small amount to make profit (In the grand scheme of things anyways).

Think about the cost of making a normal blockbuster like Fifa or Madden. These games have short development cycles (9-12 months) and are not very complex, a lot of models can be reused and resized and simply just changing jerseys, faces and colours. You would expect these games that resuse a lot of technology etc to only cost between 5-15M to make, so at a $50 price tag they only need to sell 100-300K copies to break even, thats why EA's profit margin is so high on these games.

For a game using new technology (a new game engine) with a 2-4yr development cycle you estimate the costs are going to be 20-30M. In FF7's case they spent 40M because it was an RPG and was meant to give the player over 50hrs of gameplay. For these 20-40M games to break even they need to sell 400-800K copies, which still isn't too bad but is already verging on quite high for the PC Market (a game selling over 1M copies on PC is considered a very good success).

So you see where I'm going here. Expansions are a lot more profitable to make because your reusing the engine, and your not creating a lot of new stuff, your reusing a lot and keeping your development cycle small (expansions can be released every 6-12 months if a studio is big enough and works hard).

Now for a MMO your looking at the cost of a very good RPG to make PLUS the cost of the server farms which are HUGE. For WoW you are probably looking at over 100-120M to make the game outright and who knows how much cost goes into continuous maintenance. The server farm for WoW is probably between 40-70M alone. If anyone has exact quotes by all means correct me but when my studio was contemplating MMO's we were told a figure of around 40M and our game wasn't expected to be as large as WoW.

For WoW to break even it had to sell 2-4M copies, which it did easily. Its more then doubled that figure with over 8M subscribers now, and also paying $15 a month is even more profit. Now think how much a seperate game for 360 would cost, probably much less. Including the server farms and the sponsorship Microsoft may be donating the cost to Blizzard is probably less then 40M.

What is all this rambling have to do with anything?

Just proving that in order for this WoW-360 version to be successful it would only have to sell around 1-1.5M copies... I bet it would sell that many in its first day of release.

Of course none of these figures are accounting for the price that goes to the retailers so the amount of copies that need to be sold may be slightly inflated from what I've said but you get the idea. A game only needs to sell so much to break even, the unfortunate thing is that the PC market has been going down significantly. Selling 1M on console is good but its not spectacular, whereas selling 1M on PC is considered very good.

And furthermore a game can continue selling for years, thats why games release "Game of the Year" editions and special versions to keep their cost up. And when they run out of those ideas the price starts coming down. But look at Starcraft, its still selling quite strong after 10yrs, think about how much profit that game has brought in.
 
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Of that list, the REALLY worth-playing game I see there is: KOTOR III. You can see how it will look like if you see videos of MASS EFFECT for 360.

I hope they give it to BioWare. ^^
 
I'm dying to play Hellgate London, its the team that made Diablo 2 if I remember correctly. Hopefully the game will be as good as it looks.

Duke Nukem had an article out a little bit ago I think saying its not canceled.

WoW for console would be cool, but I doubt it. Probably wrong though.
 
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/unions/read_article.php?topic_id=24380550&union_id=4596&print=1

Maybe this will clear some things up. This was printed up earlier this month.

You'll have to notice how FFXI is a cross platform MMORPG, and FFXI is radically less popular than WoW even though you can buy it for 3 mediums, including the console with the largest market share and largest next gen market share. WoW updates happen more often and more dramatically as a result, they aren't restricted by the 3 consoles they need to cater to. Look at FFXI, all this time and they haven't even released a windowed mode.

I'm sure WoW would sell more copies than FFXI did on the 360, and maybe even move some 360s. However it would probably long term hurt the quality of WoW, and this is Blizzard we're talking about. Their games sell for years because Blizzard doesn't compromise on quality even if it could help short term sales.

In terms of profitability, I'd wager throughout its lifespan WoW will generate more profit than 360, so unless microsoft buys them outright(from vivendi), I don't see them wanting to make a port.

The only way I could see this happening is them developing a completely seperate version of WoW that won't share the same updates and will be fundlementally different, and of course not share the same server space. Problem is, I don't see anyone using that. First off, this MMORPG that you're running has to get a very specific user set.

They have too...

1) Want to play a MMORPG.
2) Own a Xbox 360.
3) Either not own a PC(not likely) or prefer to play an MMORPG on a console to the point they'd prefer an inferior product without being able to interact with the huge network of 8 million players.
4) Own a Xbox 360, want to play an MMORPG and not already be playing FFXI on their 360.
5) Not already be playing WoW on their PC.(And if they switch from PC to 360... which if they have to leave PC servers isn't likely... they aren't even adding another customer, just cannibalizing their own business.)

When you look at this... it's a very small market, and once you get there you're not guaranteed a sale from every one of those guys. I mean... how many people played Everquest online adventures.... I've never met a person online or offline who's claimed to.
 
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With each passing year I'm losing more and more hope in Duke Nukem Forever. They've changed engines 2 or 3 times, which is by no means a cheap and easy switch. The amount of money they've lost on this game already must be staggering.

Hellgate... jesus damn does that look sweet. I watched a trailer for it about a year ago and I'm still creaming.
 
I'm excited for Hellgate: London, and of course, KOTOR III. I'm hoping they bring back some of the original characters from the first game, including the main character, but we'll see.
 
The first 2 KOTOR's worth the time? I haven't played any Star Wars games since... Return of the Jedi 2 I think.
 
CmdrFly said:
The first 2 KOTOR's worth the time? I haven't played any Star Wars games since... Return of the Jedi 2 I think.
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If you like long strung out games that hardly compare to the FF style weve grown up to love, sure theyre worht it. I, however, think they suck. The non-linear aspect of it was cool in 1, but now Oblivion shitted on it. I dont know, I think theyre too limited.
 
Linear games don't bother me too much, HL / HL2 / Doom3 / Quake4 / FEAR / Dark Messiah were all linear games that completely owned. If the game looks pretty and has either bitchin' weapons or a good storyline, that's good enough for me.

KOTOR's are FPS style or more like Baldur's Gate sort of thing?
 
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