Disney bought MMO studio

[corvus1970]

Speaking of, I got my Atari VCS/2600 when "Combat" was still the pack-in, and i still have a power adapter for it. You have E.T too eh? I guess we have a couple copies that didn't end up in a landfill in New Mexico

[Kistulot]

I guess we have a couple copies that didn't end up in a landfill in New Mexico

It's not my first copy, either!

Makes me question the full validity of that story, honestly.

[corvus1970]

The landfill story may or may not be true.

What is certainly true is that in 1983 the game market crashed, and crashed hard, resulting a huge shakeout of the North American gaming industry. Smaller game companies, like US games and Imagic, closed down. Companies like Coleco and Magnavox got out of the console market. Games started getting marked down and put in clearance bins. Before it was over there were a lot of Atari carts that could be had for $1.00 or less, and the company had lost millions. Bot ET and the 2600 version of Pac-Man are often brought up in regards to the crash.

However, in Japan, the Famicom started making major money for Nintendo. They approached Atari in 1984 in a desire to market the system under the Atari name. However, due to a couple of snafu's, the deal went nowhere, and Nintendo decided to market it in the US themselves as the NES.

Gotta love history

[dwturducken]

Naw... I do have an Atari 2600 with no power adapter though!

I have E.T. AND Pac-Man for it!

My 11 year old has my old Sears Pong, one of those "Atari consoles" with 50 games built in, and a Sega Genesis with two Sonic games (they play better that way) that he bought with birthday money. We love our legacy games in this house.

[Warfdalic]

MWAHAHAHA

A Yugo..... now theres a model i have no heard of for about 20 years!

This was not the quote i meant to quote... strange, i thought i clicked the right one

[dwturducken]

Drowning Mona is one of my wife's favorite movies. If you don't immediately make the association, count yourself lucky.

[Madadh]

First of all, I agree with just about all of your comments on CoH2 for smartphones/facebook, etc.   Totally want a HUGE screen (er, 3 actually) hooked up to a PC that's the size of a suitcase I use for a 2 week trip...  And, 1 vid card ain't enough, better make it...  More..   But

Apps for a phone--checking the Marketplace, for instance, or simple chat on one of your global channels--those would be welcome.

If we can get CoH back, and get any new toys to go with, these are the toys I want.  Badly....  Smartphone auction house access, and global chat chan monitoring!!  OM, that would be awesome.

[Joshex]

face book games... mobile games... game companies are in for a hard crash if they think this is actually profitable, the people at work play mobile games but only free ones, I've talked to countless people even in asia and they agree if they had to pay for a mobile game they wouldn't play it.

sad part is disney and other major game studios are now focused on this sort of mobile game development, I encourage you to look in most game company's jobs page for game designer/developer positions, you'll see "Game Developer (mobile)" and "game designer" (open it and the description says: "looking for a talented game designer who is focused on mobile game development")

no offense to all those companies but any game you make for mobile people will not buy, they will hack it and torrent it, no one is going to pay for a mobile game.. the reason? games are usually small and with poor graphics, most contain only 1 'level' most mobile games can be compared in both quality and concept to the average flash game found on newgrounds. the controls are very limited, I mean , very very limited leaving most 3d games as autoscrollers (giving the player almost no motor-controls for the character except maybe a jump a roll and side to side movement) it's like the equivalent of only having a joystick and no buttons.

people will not buy this.

people rarely even spend money on real PC/consol games, why? the quality has dropped substantially with all the excessive fadding and retcons and concept and context molestation. the game play has even begun to suffer in most games, too much realism makes superman bleed when he nicks himself with a shaver, and flying? pft! you can kiss that special ability goodbye.

my point, people only buy and play good games, if videogame companies are so lazy or incompetent that they can't make a good game and thier sales suffer (cause everyone illegally downloads it and plays it on PC)  so much to the point that they feel they need to take advantage of the recent boom of mobile gamers and try to market games to them, then I forsee the early 80's happening again.

Video Game Crash #2.

the first videogame crash was brought on by expensive systems with very few game titles, and the fact that a majority of the game titles had not been beta tested and were released for sale with game breaking glitches.

Nintendo fixed this with thier policy of "in order for you to publish for our system your game must be proven to work"

but now this next crash is coming because of a lack of quality and a steady degrasion of concept and context and a slow enlaming of gameplay. good graphics and a game that works and lots of titles may have caused a boom in the N64 PS- PS2 era but now gamers are getting wise. 1000 working games with crappy fad based gameplay and concept aspects might as well be worth 1 game of superior quality even if it does have a few bugs. thier sudden focus on mobile games is the last straw, I even saw the newest final fantasy will be a mobile exclusive title. I've talked with forums of thousands, they will not be buying that final fantasy title, nor any mobile title, they will only play the free mobile games.

game companies will regret thier focus on mobile platforms, and NCSoft will regret turning CoH into a mobile or flash game if they do.

[Victoria Victrix]

I've outlined this elsewhere, but yes, your points are correct and this is part of our pitch package.

What is also part of our pitch package is the "graying of America."  The big population bubble is getting older.  We old farts don't like playing on a tiny screen.  A lot of us don't much care for console games that require fine twitch control and combination moves, because, face it, we can't do them fast enough to prevent planting.

PC games will be making a resurgence if they are "senior friendly."  I guarantee that.

[Ceremonius]

I've outlined this elsewhere, but yes, your points are correct and this is part of our pitch package.

What is also part of our pitch package is the "graying of America."  The big population bubble is getting older.  We old farts don't like playing on a tiny screen.  A lot of us don't much care for console games that require fine twitch control and combination moves, because, face it, we can't do them fast enough to prevent planting.

PC games will be making a resurgence if they are "senior friendly."  I guarantee that.

Not only a fakt for seniors! I smoke in front of my machine and I am sort of coffee addicted . Means I always need one hand to grab my cup or my cigarette. CoH was the perfect game. I was able to play it with just one hand instead of two (mousecontrols only or keyboard only) .
That's tbh not possible in current games like dcuo or co. They are to action related to have such fine controls .
And console games and mobiles? Yeah....I gave away my ps3 for free including stuff because I didn't used it and on my mobile...hmm...I emulate old Playstation One games on it or play games like scrabble or crosswords O.o