Cliff might have had a point if he hadn't quoted one of the games that really would have suffered had multiplayer been implemented. The essence of Vanquish relies on time manipulation, which for obvious reasons is not feasible in multiplayer. Had this focus element been removed, you would have been left with a bog-standard run-and-gun game...like Gears of War.
I see plenty of people screaming "multiplayer" is the future but I can only refer them to the thousands of games out there whose multiplayer servers are dead these days. And I'm not talking ancient games like Unreal Tournament. I'm talking about games like Everybody's Golf 2 on the PSP, which is barely 3 years old. There are perhaps only a couple of hundred games these days with an active online community, while there are hundreds of thousands of games you can still play without such an online element
Multiplayer is great if you're trying to make money, but single player is where it's at if you're trying to make a game.
Christian Svensson has pretty much since become one of the most hated industry reps for me. His obvious and slimy twisting of Capcom's faux pas to make it look like Capcom is doing the best for its customers when the opposite is blatantly obvious makes him a figurehead for everything that is wrong with the industry.
It's very clear that this is nothing to do with "listening to the customer" and everything to do with damage control on people hacking out the extra DLC from the disc.
@KC_Hokie In some ways I do agree with you - the 360 version should really have been taken on its own merits and the reviewer did spent too much time comparing it to the PC version - but at the end of the day the PC version is a competing product that serves the purpose better, which is part and parrcel of the whole deal.
Just looking at that top ten is a clear indicator of why sales have been so dismal. All of those games are pretty bad, with the exception of The Witcher 2 (which most people who want to play will have played on the PC) and the acceptable Mass Effect 3.
I was browsing around for a good game yesterday and I came home with a Bluray instead. It's THAT bad.
Consider me curious, but given that it will almost certainly have a monthly fee which I cannot justify with the number of games I play a month and the little time I have with work and a family, I'll probably pass. A first-person MMORPG that actually makes an effort to be a living, breathing world in the tradition of the Elder Scrolls games is an interesting prospect though.
@Wartotehlock: Funny you should mention that. Gamestop here in Germany tried the same trick on me with Skyrim for the PC, and lo and behold, there were no copies on open sale at 10am on the first day, and it was suddenly full to the brim the following morning. Of course, such underhanded tactics only caused me to go to our electronics store two doors down, which had it in abundance, and pick it up for seven euros cheaper.
My gut feeling tells me that Sony is deliberately sabotaging its own digital distribution efforts so that it can gradually phase it out while saving face. First came the abject failure of the PSPgo, then the rise of legal and consumer rights issues that have been plaguing it over the past couple of years. Added to that is the fact that very few triple-A titles are sold over digital at full price. Most major publishers have openly admitted that the vast bulk of their online business comes from physical media, so Sony have been basically facing all of the problems of digital distribution and seeing none of the benefits. When you consider that, does it come as a surprise that they may be wanting to abandon digital sales?
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