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First off, this is about Freelancer. A great game that came out for the PC that merged RPG elements with a simulated universe. Whats MMORPG about it is that players were able to mod the game and create servers based on their own rules. A universe that has massive amout of players adventuring in the galaxy.
Now how is this relevant to anything? Its relevant because a great game that was trying testing the market (and came out as a success.. the sequel would have been what never winter nights 2 is with persistant worlds, or rather this could have been the next casual gamer friendly EVE.) I dont hate microsoft by anymeans, but when I read this, I start to wonder how microsoft is trying to "control" and butcher the PC gaming market. In 1996, game designer Chris Roberts founded an all-new studio, Digital Anvil. Already renowned for his creation of the then-popular Wing Commander series, Roberts had grown restless after his employer, Origin Systems, grew in size. He told the press that Digital Anvil would be a return to the smaller studio system which he felt produced better games. However, it wasn't until four years later that Starlancer (PC, Dreamcast), the first game to bear the Digital Anvil imprimatur, was released. Around the same time, the small shop was bought by one of the biggest companies around--Microsoft, which folded it into its internal Microsoft Game Studios system. Chris Roberts promptly exited the company, but would consult on several games in development. Microsoft's first move after buying Digital Anvil was to sell off two of its projects--Frontier Wars and Loose Cannon--to Ubisoft. It also took the previously PC-only Brute Force and turned it into an Xbox exclusive, released in 2003. That year also saw the release of the most acclaimed Digital Anvil game, Freelancer, for the PC. Now, it appears Brute Force will have the distinction of being Digital Anvil's last game. Today, Microsoft confirmed to GameSpot that it has shut down the shop and is organizing a "redeployment" of its staff to studios at Microsoft Game Studios headquarters. "Microsoft Game Studios has undergone a redeploying of resources in its Austin, Texas-based Digital Anvil studio and will centralize the studio's resources in Redmond, Washington," the company said in a statement. "We are working closely with current Digital Anvil employees to place each team member in a position on the Microsoft Game Studios team in Redmond if they so choose. This redeployment of resources will be finalized on January 31, 2006." How does this make you feel? I was actually quite bothered to find out that great games planned for the PC were forced into being console exclusives, and then after the company did all its hard work producing great games it was cut up like a piece of meat and spread out to sub divisions in microsofts dominant gaming campaign. |
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6/18/07 2:34:16 AM#2
Business as usual.
What do you expect? Money makes the world go round and that goes especially for Microsoft. Among other companies of course. |
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6/18/07 2:38:29 AM#3
The thing is no one forced them to sell up to Microsoft. This sort of thing happens all the time and I am sure many of us can look back at some of the now dissolved game studios and wish they were still around to make those addictive, fun games.
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6/18/07 2:46:29 AM#4
kinda reminds me of Westwood...used to make great RTS games in CnC+Red Alert..the games actually had some challenges in them to make them hard..ever since EA bought them its become too easy to beat the campaigns in just a few days time. Thats business though.
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6/18/07 2:52:02 AM#5
Personally Im a big fan of Independant studios....I jus feel like they keep it real ya know? they dont have the multi millions that can cause you to lose sight of what matters
The only way to get anywhere in life is to pwn everything in site...and repeat. |
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Derrrr. of course I know its business, but then business can be both logical and illogical, good and evil, smart and stupid. Saying its just business says that if its business, its some how ok. Like if you walk into your house and someone is doing your wife, they give your wife some money afterwards and she tells you , "dont take it so hard honey, its just business".
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6/18/07 2:58:16 AM#7
Well i already hate Msoft and SoE (EA an't so great either, that's just about everyone now huh?) Msoft made windows vista and SoE breaks games, they both only care about money (doesn't everyone?) *sigh* nothing new really
PS. whats up with "only 100 year old guy who plays video games is....me :)" that was added to the end of my post O.o
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6/18/07 3:15:48 AM#8
EA games is hated around the globe for this, sadly buying your competitors and dissolving them is still more profitable than just letting them be. Its called being a monopoly.
its as this guy said: "|It's quite simply the masses are sick of the continual milking of franchises. The constant subpar games and the fact that they watch some of their favorite development house's gobbled up by EA, only to be thrown away after EA has secured the IP's to popular game's. Honestly, if EA were to secure controling intrest in UbiSoft tommorow, we would have Splinter Cell:Back in the Hood to look forward too next year. I can see it now Sam, replaced by MC Stealth, must now traverse the urban jungle to secure a fresh ride and some hoe's. Why, becuase EA must at all cost's cash in on the growing MTV rap music video market." |
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6/18/07 3:26:24 AM#9
It is the nature of the software business. Not surprising at all. Only very few software companies have remained private or haven't been bought out. Someone once described the software industry as "incestuous". It is a good description if you don't think of it in terms of immediate family. Employees in the industry end up working with many of the same people at different companies during their career.
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6/18/07 3:32:03 AM#10
people that dont play games shouldnt make or manage them. I'm sure you've all heard people say "if the executives at insert-corporation-here were forced to play their games xx amount of times I bet the games would turn out better". Well its damn true. |
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6/18/07 3:32:51 AM#11
"Msoft made windows vista and SoE breaks games"
For starters there aint nowt wrong with vista.. infact its a very good OS sure there are some driver and compatability issues.. but they wont be around for long.. people just love knocking microsoft down..
and as for SOE braknig games.. well they messed up swg but thats it.. |
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6/18/07 5:19:13 AM#12
Um... about Vista...
No, it is still bloatware with too much useless, RANDOM crap packed onto it for no good reason. Bells and whistles that actually do nothing at all to increase performance, and in fact impact it negatively. Nuff said. As far as how this all makes me feel about MicroSoft... exactly the same as I always have... they follow a simple gameplan: Make More Money At All Costs. they have no conscience. They do not care at all about their consumers. They sell things by flash and hoopla... make it shiney, people buy into it. As PT Barnum penned... "There is a sucker born every minute"... and MicroSoft capitalizes on that. Daily. They are totally predictable. If you had a little old lady that owned a company and had a ton of cash, and made her walk in front of MicroSoft's Home Office each morning, she would get figuratively mugged, daily. you could set your watch by it. As consumers, we really DO have the final word. MicroSoft could have been stopped from destroying Digital Anvil. And Vista could have been left on store shelves unpurchased. But it would take every single person stopping and thinking for themselves. With people reading, seeing, and listening to random crap MicroSoft releases, and simply nodding their heads and spending their money... this will never change. Not. Ever. So, you cannot be angry at MicroSoft. But if you have to be angry at someone, look at the people that accept and support the heartless companies without question, and yourself too if you buy into their nonsense. |
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6/18/07 7:16:30 AM#13
Sure, microsoft OSs are bloatware. They consume too much of your systems resources for what a gamer really needs.
But, Vista is a step in the right direction for a gamer (other than the bloatware factor). This is true because Vista is microsofts way of putting their foot down on which hardware vendors are allowed to get by with shitty drivers. The new directX 10 and driver signings in Vista eliminate many potential problematic situations for gamers. Yes, people are bitching and moaning about getting Vista to work right. But the truth of the matter is that if you get Vista up and running you will have a more stable system than in XP. This is true because Vista requires ighter tolerances on 3rd party drivers and software. This is a good thing. Companies like creative have been releasing drivers with 15 year old code and are expecting OSs to run those drivers no problem. Well I am glad microsoft is putting their foot down and requiring many hardware manufacturers to step up and write some quality drivers for the next century. Vista (other than the bloatware) is a step in the right direction. Now we just have to get microsoft to write a thin client gaming OS. Gamers don't need the myriad of services that microsoft provides. We just want something that lets us play our games with as little intrusion as possible. |
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nakuma
 Novice Member
Joined: 5/04/06
"then again I could be wrong, but that's just my opinion" -Dennis Miller |
6/18/07 7:33:11 AM#14
Originally posted by gpett
As far as creative is concerned, dont get me started. they are utterly disgusting, this what happens when your the only big kid on the block and think you own everything and can do and go as you please. their drivers are disgusting and outdated. and they take literally 6-9+ months on end to release a new damn set of drivers. i find the I am going to jump ship in mutiny when a new soundcard takes advantage of OpenAL more thoroughly as Directx sound is outdated crap. I have had it with Creative, they need a slap in the face to bring them back into reality, only way that will happen is when a competitor comes along and starts taking money out their pocket by stealing customers. back to VISTA i agree MS needs a slimmie OS, a OS that doesnt tax or nullify your upgrades. there is no excuse for it. if it scaled properly I wouldnt be bitching, but the performance/resource weigh ratio is not good. Hopefully in the coming 4-6 months or so we will see vast improvements in how VISTA handles itself, with memory management, Resource management, and otherwise driver stability. It will soon be ready for us to move on, but only when VISTA is a viable alternative to XP, as of now, its not. 3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 285 GTX 1GB, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO. |
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6/18/07 7:37:35 AM#15
Originally posted by Fireburst You obviously havnt heard the stories about Sledge-Hammer-Happy Mr Gates  |
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nakuma
Novice Member
Joined: 5/04/06
"then again I could be wrong, but that's just my opinion" -Dennis Miller |
6/18/07 7:38:02 AM#16
Originally posted by Rabenwolf lmao! nice one.....aww man i'd end up coming back with a shot gun and with my wife screaming "whats that for honey! noooo id reply with " Dont worry,....its just business!" lmao!   3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 285 GTX 1GB, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO. |
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nakuma
Novice Member
Joined: 5/04/06
"then again I could be wrong, but that's just my opinion" -Dennis Miller |
6/18/07 7:41:21 AM#17
Originally posted by turnipz thats f***king halarious lmfao! whew that made my morning, thanx, much better than my cup of coffee. 3.4ghz Phenom II X4 965, 8GB PC12800 DDR3 GSKILL, EVGA 285 GTX 1GB, 640GB HD SATA II, BFG 1000WATT PSU. MSI NF980-G65 TRI-SLI MOBO. |
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6/18/07 7:41:55 AM#18
On the Vista note...
I seriously miss Win 98. Why? I could install ONLY the parts I needed of it. Now imagine an XP... or Vista... that would let me NOT install MSN, or IE, or Windows Media Player... Why? I never use that garbage anyway! If I IM, it is Yahoo. I use FireFox, and VLC player. And my gaming machine has NONE of those installed. ALL I want it to do is RUN GAMES. MicroSoft is still all about ramming it's grabage down our throats until we choke on it. And Vista chokes PCs. Useless. Garbage. |
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6/18/07 7:49:01 AM#19
Well its business....it would be good for you if they made it to the PC but it would be good for some people to be made for the console and for Microsoft they choose the one that makes more money.....
PC is full of piracy and that stuff...but with the consoles theres much less piracy so they win more with the games to the consoles than with the games for PC I know its hard but lol i dont really care cuz i have both consoles and i really like the idea of many games that were from PC to become console games ^^ it runs greater and its better concepted for the consoles than for the PC(many bugs). And i'm no flammer that hates all companies....Microsoft is very nice and SoE too and whatever too..... Cheers  _____________________________________________________ Currently Playing: GTA4, Urban Terror, Aion,Dreamfall:TLJ,Fahrenheit |
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6/18/07 8:25:32 AM#20
Microsoft isn’t worried about quality so much as they are about people writing drivers that do things they don’t want them to like making a backup copy of your game in case the CD goes bad, or playing a movie without first paying Microsoft for the privilege. Vista is all about controlling what you can do with your PC. |
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