New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

[DrJones]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

3DO didnt only make HH Baseball....they tanked for others reasons....but HH was always regarded as an excellent game....if MLB 2Kx would approach the game with 100% sim experience and leave the gimicks like big heads to the bigs....MLB 2K would mos def see the benefits of making that switch....

Review-wise, possibly. OS-happiness-wise, absolutely. Sales-wise, very unlikely.

There are two major reasons why games aren't geared exclusively to sim-heads:

1. There aren't enough of them.
2. They'll buy the arcade-sim hybrid, moan and complain about its faults, then buy the same title next year anyway, because they a.) absolutely need their baseball fix, and/or b.) are eternally optimistic about the promise of "next year".

The only time you see games that ARE genuinely simmy are when (at least some of) the devs are sim-heads themselves, and they've got sufficient dev time, and they've convinced the higher-ups that such an approach can yield more money (it obviously helps when a higher-up is a sim-head himself, but that's awfully rare).

[GnarlyKing]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

3DO didnt only make HH Baseball....they tanked for others reasons....but HH was always regarded as an excellent game....if MLB 2Kx would approach the game with 100% sim experience and leave the gimicks like big heads to the bigs....MLB 2K would mos def see the benefits of making that switch....

I don't know. I'm about 99% sure that Triple Play outsold High Heat(and probably HH and ASB combined) every year that they were on the market together.

[allBthere]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

Well, it happens in my house. I seldom buy these games each year. I'm still playing The Show 06 and Tiger Woods 06. I bought FIFA 06 and 08 -- skipped 07. ALL of this is entirely up to the consumer. It's YOU who chooses to purchase or not purchase. You don't see people complaining that Honda puts out new automobiles every year, or that Samsung puts out new HDTV's every six months.

But the argument is that the quality of the product would increase more than it would releasing it every year since the 'inbetween' year you just keep developing instead of preparing for launch et...

[GnarlyKing]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

But the argument is that the quality of the product would increase more than it would releasing it every year since the 'inbetween' year you just keep developing instead of preparing for launch et...

I have no doubt it would lead to better games, but there's no way you're convincing management that twice as many people would buy the game at full price if it was released every 2 years, because I don't think there's any chance that it's true. These products pretty much have a set audience that doesn't change much from year to year. Releasing a game every 2 or 3 years would not cause that audience to grow enough, if it did at all. So while quality may increase, the revenue wouldn't and I'll give you one guess which one management cares about more.

[HK-47]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

Review-wise, possibly. OS-happiness-wise, absolutely. Sales-wise, very unlikely.

There are two major reasons why games aren't geared exclusively to sim-heads:

1. There aren't enough of them.
2. They'll buy the arcade-sim hybrid, moan and complain about its faults, then buy the same title next year anyway, because they a.) absolutely need their baseball fix, and/or b.) are eternally optimistic about the promise of "next year".

The only time you see games that ARE genuinely simmy are when (at least some of) the devs are sim-heads themselves, and they've got sufficient dev time, and they've convinced the higher-ups that such an approach can yield more money (it obviously helps when a higher-up is a sim-head himself, but that's awfully rare).

I think Ben Brinkman said that the Rookie & Pro settings are more arcadey, and All-Star & Legend play a realsitic game of baseball.

Hopefully this is true, cause every year all the settings need MAJOR slider adjustments!I just want to be able to play on Legend without having to adjust the F'N sliders!

[HealyMonster]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

I think Ben Brinkman said that the Rookie & Pro settings are more arcadey, and All-Star & Legend play a realsitic game of baseball.

Hopefully this is true, cause every year all the settings need MAJOR slider adjustments!I just want to be able to play on Legend without having to adjust the F'N sliders!

somehow i dont think 2k has 2 versions of gamplay in the game. given theres a big difference in difficulty between legend and rookie but come on this guy want us to beleive that rookie is arcade while legend is sim? i get that "more realistic" approach it just sounds kind of "used care salesman-ish" idk it just dont make me want to run right out and buy the game.

[bukktown]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

I have no doubt it would lead to better games, but there's no way you're convincing management that twice as many people would buy the game at full price if it was released every 2 years, because I don't think there's any chance that it's true. These products pretty much have a set audience that doesn't change much from year to year. Releasing a game every 2 or 3 years would not cause that audience to grow enough, if it did at all. So while quality may increase, the revenue wouldn't and I'll give you one guess which one management cares about more.

But remember what KushGamer said a few pages back. MLB2k7 almost broke even. It still lost money. Which means the company would have made more money by not making the game.

[GnarlyKing]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

But remember what KushGamer said a few pages back. MLB2k7 almost broke even. It still lost money. Which means the company would have made more money by not making the game.

True. But my point is that had they not released the game and just continued developing it to be released as 2K8, which is the type of strategy that was being suggested, then 2K8 would have to sell twice as many copies to break even. That would not happen and then they would lose even more money and there would be no game.

You'd be more likely to get a developer to take the strategy Activision is taking with Call of Duty. They have 2 developers each working on the series with a 2 year development cycle so that they can release a new COD game every year. Unfortunately, probably the only sports series that sells enough to even consider such an idea is Madden.

[Artman22]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

Well if thats the case how did High Heat (3DO I believe) go bankrupt? They went str8 sim for sure and tanked. But thats a whole nother thread....

To me its balance-appealing to the masses, a catchy or trademark name and marketing. Hehe...I'm a salesman can't you tell.

They didnt go bankrupt because it became sim. It played an awesome game of baseball, but it was the ugliest game ever. The game had very bad graphics and not to mention the marketing was not great either. If HH had very nice graphics and did a little bit more marketing it would have done much better.

[KushGamer]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

But remember what KushGamer said a few pages back. MLB2k7 almost broke even. It still lost money. Which means the company would have made more money by not making the game.

Actually 2K wouldnt have lost less money by not releasing 2K7, because they would have had to pay millions of dollars in fines to MLB.

[El_MaYiMbE]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

Kush the 2 pics u used as avatars are in Gameinformer.....i guess thats what that folder was with the pics was for!

[DrJones]

Re: New interview with Ben Brinkman on The Sports Anomaly.

Actually 2K wouldnt have lost less money by not releasing 2K7, because they would have had to pay millions of dollars in fines to MLB.

The joys of exclusivity.