Why does Kudo and Team Fight Night Continue to Ignore Us

[Money99]

We've been begging for a deep career mode since the Knockout Kings series and yet we still get no respect!
While we continue to get broken gimics like "Haymaker" career options like a true calendar or actual realistic training regimens are thrown in Kudo's garbage can.
I guess we can all get excited about the idea of punching our rival during weigh-ins but we'll have to wait another year before we can actually spar in preparation for our next bout.

Thanks Kudo! Thanks EA! Thanks for nothing!

And to the OS team, would you please ask him about this? Why we dynasty/career junkies are being ignored? It seems like nobody from IGN, to Gamespot to O.S. has the guts to bring this up to him? All we get is the standard Q&A about graphics, online features and the newest gimic that lends nothing to realism. Please Team OS get as much detail about the career mode as you can and if it's as shallow as it sounds call him on it!!!
I mean, VB2 is almost 4 years old and it's got a career mode to make you wet yoruself. And yet EA, with all it's money and pull, can't even get us multiple belts!

Thank you.

[blackceasar]

Re: Why does Kudo and Team Fight Night Continue to Ignore Us

We've been begging for a deep career mode since the Knockout Kings series and yet we still get no respect!
While we continue to get broken gimics like "Haymaker" career options like a true calendar or actual realistic training regimens are thrown in Kudo's garbage can.
I guess we can all get excited about the idea of punching our rival during weigh-ins but we'll have to wait another year before we can actually spar in preparation for our next bout.

Thanks Kudo! Thanks EA! Thanks for nothing!

And to the OS team, would you please ask him about this? Why we dynasty/career junkies are being ignored? It seems like nobody from IGN, to Gamespot to O.S. has the guts to bring this up to him? All we get is the standard Q&A about graphics, online features and the newest gimic that lends nothing to realism. Please Team OS get as much detail about the career mode as you can and if it's as shallow as it sounds call him on it!!!
I mean, VB2 is almost 4 years old and it's got a career mode to make you wet yoruself. And yet EA, with all it's money and pull, can't even get us multiple belts!

Thank you.

I hate to tell you how the world works but..... EA doesnt really care about what you want. They care about what thier target audience wants. I work in Marketing so let me define to you what a company's "target audience" is. It is the age/sex demographic that they project to get the most of thier sales from. They take into account these peoples age, sex, spending habbits, income, lifestyle, education level, wethere they are a casual gamer or not, etc. Then they look at thier numbers and see how many people in each demographic bought that particular title. Unfortunately thier target audience for almost all of thier sports titles are the casual gamer from ages 16-24 These people dont care about a deep career mode....and since thier target audiecne doesnt care about a deep career mode, EA doesnt either. They arent going to spend the money or put in the time and effort to work on something that the numbers tell them they dont have to.

And if you had a chance to put EA on the spot and ask them in front of the press or a bunch of game publications, EA would issue a "politician" type of statement. One that answers your question, but doesnt REALLY answer your question.... because the real answer to your question would make them look bad. Its no different than politics, then they wipe the sweat from thier foreheads (figuratively) with a "whew!" under thier breath and move onto the next question happy to have been able to weasle out of the valid and hard question you posed to them. This is how things work my friend, its not gonna change. Maybe another company will make a boxing game and take you into consideration, but EA isnt, because they dont have to. Im not even bashing EA or calling them "evil" for it..its just business and in business someone always ends up with the short end of the stick, it just happens to be you and other people who want the same things you want. You will never see any company or political figure tell the whole truth. You will NEVER see EA stand up and say "well we didnt improve this or that, or we left this mode out because we want to turn a big of a profit as possible and our numbers tell us that we will sell just as many copies of this game without the improvments or additions you want". That would be the honest answer, but who or what company in thier right mind is gonna say that? NONE of them. Even companies who dont have the track recrod of EA arent gonna stand up and give you the hard stright up asnwer..its just not gonna happen.

I dont know how much you know about Marketing, so I hope you dont get offended when I break it down to you like this. Here is a good example..and I will use this one because I happen to be black. Next time commercials come on..pay close attention to them..look at the product, and look at who they have in the commercial, what kind of people are they? Age, race, financial status etc. Example 1. You see a commercial for the new Allen Iverson shoe from rebook. Lets say Allen isnt even in the commercial...if not then you know who is? People who are a reflection of thier target audiecne. Black and white males ages about 12-24 are the primary target audience for thier basketball shoes..so in the commerical..thats who you see..you see white and black kids, age 12-24, male, rockin the shoe. Rebook wants to cater thier commercial for that shoe to the people who they think would A. be most interested in buying it. B. also who WOULD actually spend themoney on something like that.. and C. who actually has the money TO spend on something like that. You dont see a 45 year old caucasian female in the rebook basketball shoe commercial cuz how many people in that demographic are really interested in basketball shoes that much??? Why market to them???

Another example is this.. just the other day since its xmas time and all I saw a commercial for a new Lexus SUV, the vehicle retails for like 48,000 dollars. In the commercial you have this mid 30's to mid 40's clean cut white male, not fat, attractive, looks like hes got a good job, educated, etc...and hes in the jewerly store, an expensive one at that looking to buy some really nice jewelry..then he looks out the window and across the street he sees that Lexus..and there is a bow on top of it..the car drives off but the bow stays cuz it was really attatched to the street liglht..then the camera cuts back to him as if he's come up with a bright idea. The commercial then cuts away to show him suprizing his wife, who is also caucassian, probably late 20's to late 30's, shes very good looking as well with this 48,000 dollar car in the garage with a bow on it..mind you the house they are in is VERY nice as well....... So..... you ask yourself, "how come no black people in this commercial? why is it with a good looking white business man looking type with a woman who looks likke a trophy wife??" its simple...cuz when you check the numbers and the demographics, that type of person is the majority of person who can afford a car like that and who would actually buy his wife a 50k car for xmas. Sure some black people can do that..but lets be real here, there arent that many..so it would be a waste of expensive air time and advertising money to make a 500,000 dollar commercial and cater it to a target audience who probably accounts for only 8% of Lexus car sales. Look out your window and see a 50k car going down the street and 9 times outta 10 the person driving it looks like the man in the commerical. Not exactly like him..but you get the picture.

Thats pretty much how marketing works in the advertising world. Thats why you dont see 50 year old white women in Rebook or Nike shoe commercials and thats why you dont see a 18 year old black kid in a Lexus commerical. its all about segmentation..doing studies on what kind of person would actually be interested and could afford a particular prodcut.

[Money99]

Re: Why does Kudo and Team Fight Night Continue to Ignore Us

Thanks for the marketing lesson.
But here's where you're kind of wrong when it comes to Fight Night. I post over at the IGN Fight Night board. Kudo has addressed a handful of concerns brought up on those boards. From the overuse of the Haymaker to online "super users".
Why listen to some complaints and not others?
I've read interviews where he even mentions message boards trying to get a feel for what people want. In fact, last year, one of the programmers would post regularly asking questions and answering them.
I've seen quite a few posts where people have blasted the shallow career mode. It's also been mentioned in reviews of the game.
My thing is, only about 20% of Xbox users go online. If we use that same stat for Fight Night this means that 80% of your consumers are playing the game against the CPU. Where is the lasting appeal in this game? There is none. There's no complex training. There's not multiple belts. There's a static amount of fights you can have. Aging isn't an issue.
It's the same thing over and over again. Build fighter, move up ladder, win belts, repeat.
Why do you think so many games are going the route of Grand Theft Auto? People don't want to be told what to do and where to go. A great majority of games are free roaming now. But what about Fight Night? In other sports titles you can play a dynasty mode that spans 30 years plus. You scout, draft and develop players. You hire and fire coaches. You win championships and then rebuild when your team is old. The same cannot be said for Fight Night. In fact, Evander Holyfields boxing for the Sega Genesis had a deeper career mode. That's pathetic.

I understand marketing completely. You want to make as much money as possible from your main demographic. But there is no demographic if you can't get people to play your game for more than a week. And with Fight Nights static, shallow career mode, that's exactly what's going to happen for 80% of it's consumers. This will be a rental for a lot of people. Sure, there'll be those that can't resist the eye candy. But eventually, people will start turning away from this series when they realise that they did all they can do after 3 days of playing.

[koartist]

Re: Why does Kudo and Team Fight Night Continue to Ignore Us

yep, Kudo's quite the worthless developer. I'm just waiting for the PS3 and VB3 (I'm sure it will happen eventually). I've given up on EA boxing games/Kudo for good. Not only are his cheesy gimmicks horrible, he also straight up LIES about features in the game. Last year he promised all kinds of stuff in interviews that were never even in the game. So don't even listen to the chump, I know I stopped a LOOOONG time ago, as have thousands of other boxing fans hoping for a true boxing sim. Hopefully 2K sports will take a stab at boxing too, and I'm sure there'll be a VB3 by the end of '06. (just imagine the career mode from VB2 PLUS a further polished All-Stars gameplay!)

THOSE are what I'll truly be waiting for, although I'll probably play FNR3 for a second or two just to beat up DLH a few times. I dunno, we'll see....if they tone down parries, make stamina more important, and have TRUE one punch KO's (first round, first knockdown, etc.) it might be okay, but it already looks like the parries are just as dumb as b4 so I won't hold my breath, that's for sure. The "super punch" looks to be a gheymaker taken to a whole new arcadish cheese level too. Ugghhh.


BTW, VBAllStars is coming to the USA sometime soon.

[Vast]

Re: Why does Kudo and Team Fight Night Continue to Ignore Us

BTW, VBAllStars is coming to the USA sometime soon.

Can you confirm this!?????