A little late in the game for something like this, surely?

People already earn trophies "dishonestly" as it is. I don't see why it should bother you (if you care about them) as long as you know you earned your own.

Not significantly. That's not a mark against the game or anything, though. Doubt Sony would even push it hard enough for it to make a dent. It's not like any single game will be the thing that saves the platform, either - they need a broad range of quality software that just isn't there yet.

The 3DS is poor for fighting games (ergonomically). I really regretted SSFIV being my launch game of choice. And there's no danger of UE3 coming to 3DS, so there's similarly little chance of MK. I don't know that that's a loss.

I'm not sure how much I believe this, because there aren't really all that many countries that have the online infrastructure to support such a thing. Limits your market. Seemed like Sony understood this when they talked about it previously, too.

This makes a lot more sense for a small publisher like Atlus than the HD sequel people were gagging for. 3DS is looking stronger all the time.

It's hard to think of a recent game that has had so obviously rushed a development (though Mass Effect 3 would be a good shout). Given the proper time, most of the things that are clearly wrong with it - awful wave-based combat, transparent and excessive asset reuse, poor pacing, etc - could be fixed. But time alone wouldn't redeem the awful characters. BioWare's writing department needs an editor. A real one. Someone able to tell them to tone Merrill's stupidity or Fenris' angst down and bother to add dimension to these characters.

They're running out of places to take it, really. Seems like a natural outgrowth of that.

Best not to get one's hopes up at this point. Sites like IGN will happily use the possibility of a rumour about potential work on Half-Life to drum up hits.

Well, it's expanded the market somewhat and may or may not have cannibalised sales of the new generation of handhelds. We need to see it to the finish to speculate on the latter point, though, and make sincere efforts to explore other possible reasons for any sales underperformance by either platform. I think the current media narrative of "Apple Uber Alles" warps public perception and makes it difficult for reasonable discussion regarding smartphone and handheld gaming and the effect of either one on the other.

It's definitely still in its infancy. The use of virtual buttons and sticks in so many of the games speaks to that quite strongly. There's a lot of work still to be done in terms of actually nailing game interfaces on mobile devices. But it's getting better.

I personally use my phone for internet and social media rather than games, however. The "fill the 5 minutes in the dentist" that people say they have those games for I spend in those other ways.

Great RPG that was under rated IMO because you didn't have some happy go lucky teen kid with huge hair as a hero.(Japan got that version if you recall)

Dracula68

Nah, each region got the game they'd approve of: Japan got their teen, the rest of us got a grizzled old man.

Most of the poor response to Nier comes down to the lack of obvious polish and the absence of will among particular outlets to give it the time it needs to win one over. But it has a lot of heart and the actual substance of the game - the writing and the acting especially - will mean people are still talking about it years from now, long after they've forgotten this generation's disposable AAA games.