Game Development Giant

As we all know, from-software is a studio owned by Namco, and Namco has no affiliation with Sony.

However, "Bloodborne" is the work of Hidetaka Miyazaki, and it is exclusive to Sony ps4. Moreover, the copyright also belongs to Sony, which means that this game is paid by Sony to from-software, and then Hidetaka Miyazaki A work with such a strong style of the Soul series has been developed.

It goes without saying that this game is great.

What I want to talk about here is just the development and distribution model of "Bloodborne", which is what many people call second-party games.

It is precisely because Mars Entertainment has money, so even if no third-party company is willing to give them an exclusive, it is still okay to spend money to find someone to be the second party. After all, Mars Entertainment does not have that many manpower, and a few games with a very special style , and you may not necessarily be good at it.

Of course, judging from the current situation, Mars Entertainment’s games in the console market are still quite large. The combined market share of Sega and Sony’s consoles is only half of Mars Entertainment’s. However, can this advantage be maintained until next year? In an era, it is difficult to say. In fact, many people speculate that such an advantage cannot continue.

However, people have predicted that if Mars Entertainment can release their new console at about the same time, they can probably continue to maintain this share advantage by relying on the fans accumulated on the old console, although it is impossible to return it. It can be so big, but now that they have announced that their new console will be released one year later than the other two, the impact is much greater.

It is said that after the news of Jester’s press conference came out.

Sony's R\u0026D department even announced a day off. The reason was that in order to complete the project as quickly as possible, the entire team often worked overtime until late. Now that the project has been completed, they have a day off.

Sega also has a similar way of celebrating.

Many media and players alike. Everyone started to look down on Mars Entertainment.

Even developers who have cooperated well with Mars Entertainment in the past have called to inquire about the authenticity of this matter.

In fact, Jester cannot guarantee that he will be able to successfully counterattack dreambx3 with the help of a strong starting game camp in a year's time.

This was not a game of house. Of course he knew how risky it was to make such a decision. However, when discussing this matter in an internal meeting, the resistance encountered was not too great. Everyone understood his idea, and they all agreed to do it.

Most of the top management of Mars Entertainment are game developers, and they are all very good game developers, some even like Jester. While holding administrative positions, they also participate in game development from time to time, so these people usually do this when thinking about things. Consider whether there are any benefits to multi-game development.

They also know how much impact this will have on their market share.

But, they all know it too. A better console can indeed develop better games, although this was proposed by Jester. It was also promoted by Jester, but the final decision was reached by the entire Mars Entertainment.

Previously, after Jester's press conference was reported by the media, some gaming media rebuked Jester for being naive and irresponsible. This put Mars Entertainment in danger. There was obviously a safer way, so don't choose , you have to be paranoid to choose such a path - it doesn't matter if your dream game fails, but it is very likely that a company that may be worth tens of billions of dollars in the future will collapse.

There are many media that hold this view. Not only the media in the gaming industry, but also some professional financial media and even Forbes magazine have expressed some opinions on Jester's behavior.

But soon, someone from Mars Entertainment took the initiative to say that this decision was not made by Jester on his own initiative. When making this decision, he had conducted internal discussions within the company, and their company's The senior management also all agreed.

However, many players are not as pessimistic as these people.

They heard Jester say that when Dreambox 3 is released, they will prepare a large number of excellent next-generation games. Moreover, most of these games have been developed more than half, and they can guarantee that the quality will reach the level when the console is released. It’s a perfect level, which they also look forward to when doing interviews or posting on forums.

They all said in an extremely firm tone that they would definitely support Dreambox 3. Even if Sony and Sega's consoles were released earlier, they would not buy their consoles.

But there are too few such serious players.

After all, there are many light gamers, and their viscosity towards games is not that great, at least not at the beginning. Even these people lack the basic ability to judge whether a game is good or bad. In their eyes, The game can be picked up and played at any time, and it can be stopped at will when something happens.

These are not real gamers, but these people are becoming the main force in game consumption.

Jester remembers that one of the most important reasons why PS2 achieved such brilliant success was that they created a large number of such light players.

These players are actually following the crowd.

Generally speaking, they buy whichever game console or console they buy the most and play the games.

He lacks judgment. For example, a senior core player has a relatively fixed style of playing games. He will not be selective about all games, and he will also have his own ideas about the judgment of a game. If he does not like the style, then No matter how great others praise the game, they probably won't buy it.

And the most important reason.

That is the innovation in gameplay brought about by technological progress.

This is not an evolution from an 8-bit machine to a 16-bit machine. It is basically limited to the expansion of two-dimensional images. Although the picture is much more beautiful than before, the gameplay is still that of the eight-bit machine. Therefore, in In the era of sixteen-bit computers, the sales of eight-bit computers still achieved good results. Even some games on eight-bit machines have sold well.

According to statistics from Mars Entertainment, their eight-bit game cartridges actually account for 20% to 25% of their total sales.

However, going from a 16-bit machine to a 32-bit machine is not as simple as going from an 8-bit machine to a 16-bit machine.

This time is the transition from 2d to 3d.

From two-dimensional to three-dimensional, many gameplays will be born that could only exist in the imagination before. This is the most important thing.

In other words, after the release of the next-generation console.

Whether it's Sega or Sony. The games they develop may not exist in the original history, but they may understand the progress of 3D games over 2D games and develop classic games that are good enough and excellent enough.

For example, Naughty Dog in the original history was just an insignificant small company before the advent of the 3D era, but after the advent of the 3D era, they developed "Old Bandicoot". As a result, it became a first-class production company in one fell swoop, and their Crash Bandicoot even became a part of Sony's PS platform. The most successful game series.

This classic image of Bandicoot has even become a symbol of Sony like Mario is to Nintendo and Sonic is to Sega.

Although Naughty Dog is now its own studio. They are also working intensively on developing the game "Bandicoot", but who can guarantee that Sony will not be able to find a second Naughty Dog?

after all. In the original history, there were too many people who had extremely high talents in the entrepreneurial stage, but failed.

Their failure was not because they were incapable, but because they did not meet Bole. Without Bole, they would not have been able to survive the most difficult period at the beginning. But with Bole, the situation might be completely different. Even Jester could It is concluded that according to Kutaragi Ken's determination, another "Naughty Dog" from Sony should not be far away from appearing.

But what surprised Jester.

Although he had already made 3D games on PC several years in advance, it seems that Sega's next-generation console still chose the 2D path they chose in the original world.

Judging from the demos they announced and the parameters that have been revealed, it is still almost the same as the historical Sega Saturn.

time flies.

The limelight of several game exhibitions in the second half of 1994 was almost monopolized by Sony and Sega, especially the Tokyo Exhibition. Sony and Sega both chose the Tokyo Exhibition to officially debut their new consoles, and even announced their new consoles. , prepared a press conference that lasted for an hour and a half.

When faced with random questions from reporters, they always spoke up.

Sony even demonstrated the performance of the game console at the press conference. The demonstration was a fighting game specially developed by Sony's studio for the new console, called "Urban Fighting". The settings of this type of game There is nothing much to say, it is probably just a large number of copycats of "Tekken" and "VR Warrior". According to Sony, this game will be the most powerful 3D game currently.

The picture displayed during the demonstration is very outstanding. It can be said that even the 3D pictures of many current arcade games cannot match it. According to several reporters who have tried it on site, the feel and impact are very good.

As for the on-site audience, through watching the game live, the result was that the game played very smoothly.

Jester also saw this report two days later, and asked someone to bring the video to watch, and then Jester was speechless about Sony.

Basically, he can be sure that judging from the performance of the PS2 announced by Sony, it is impossible for them to make a game with such beautiful graphics, because the released graphics and the modeling of the characters are already better than they were in the 'era' The character modeling in the project is even more exquisite.

With such a game screen, it is simply impossible for a game console with such configuration to complete a complete game.

The only possibility is that Sony tampered with the trial game disc.

Basically, you can only play a limited number of characters and some game content, otherwise it would be completely unexplainable.

This kind of situation is not uncommon in later generations. For example, Ubisoft likes to do this kind of thing. For example, their "The Division" was first announced. The picture, the light and shadow, and the simulation were really amazing and amazing. I really thought I had seen the graphics of the next generation. Even a non-graphics person like Jester felt that if this game came out, it would definitely be played.

However, wait for the actual video of the game to come out.

Damn it, the whole place has shrunk like crazy. Not only have the high-precision modeling been cut off, but even the light and shadow effects have been reduced across the board, and that's not all.

From a game that is considered the graphics benchmark of the next era, it has become a shooting game that is not so bad.

Then players all over the world said that we were cheated.

Since then, not only Ubisoft's broadcasts have been disbelieved, but also other companies' broadcasts. As long as a company broadcasts a game with terrible graphics, then players will definitely I would say that there is no need to watch it. It will definitely be shrunk when it is released in the future, because if it is not shrunk, it will not be able to reach the frame rate that can play smoothly.

In fact, the frame rate thing only started in the PS3 era. When people played games before, there was no discussion of frame rate.

How many games in the PS2 era can achieve 30 frames stability?

Moreover, in the ps3 era, players who were satisfied with thirty frames have even intensified in the ps4 era, clamoring not to play until sixty frames, especially some idiots, because of the high-definition reset of the end of the American empire. It has achieved high-definition modeling and stable 60 frames, so we use this standard to require other games. If other games can't do it, they will spam it.

Spray trash without even playing.

Of course, there is indeed a difference in playability between sixty frames and thirty frames, as you can experience from the PS3 version of The Last Days and the PS4 version of The Last Days.

But is this difference really that big?

For example, The Witcher 3 suffered the biggest disaster. Because of unstable frame rates and serious frame drops during combat, a group of idiots scolded them. They even found a video of a Polish jackass when the Witcher 3 was announced. Compare it with the official game and explain how to reduce the screen size.

They even said that the screen has been reduced, but the frame rate is still not stable. This is because the game is not played carefully.

As a result, when the Polish idiot came out and asked why the screen was reduced, he said that because of the performance of the console, we could only reduce the screen, because without the console, there would be no instant climax after The Witcher 3.

Praise the Polish jackass for daring to tell the truth and not being afraid of offending players.

I started complaining that PCs are all pirates.

If it weren’t for their console party, you PC players wouldn’t even be able to play the game.

This kind of face is simply disgusting. (To be continued...)