A interesting read on NEC Interchannel

And wasn't the original Ape Escape heralded as one of the best, unique platformers for the system? I was confused also why Ape Escape 2 wasn't coming over there.

I mean, you're right Clash, it's not like people will say "So MGS 3 looks pretty amazing, huh? Too bad it's on the system with stupid 2d graphics games!!!".

And what, does Sony lose money on crappy games? Why should they even care? I always thought the approval board was just so hentai games and stuff like that didn't get put out.

Hell, by Sony's own logic, Dark Cloud 2 should have never been approved since the first one sucked so bad.

Ape Escape sold enough to become a Greatest Hits, but it did not sell fast enough for Sony. Sony was saying that it was not happy with AEs sales after it being out for one month, but then over time it sold plenty. So I think Sony just figured it should not bother with AE2 in the U.S.

I mean I really don't know how the Approval Board works, but it seems pretty wonkey. The PS2 user base is wide enough that I feel that it should have enough room for more niche titles.

just like any other sort of corporate approval entity, the stated purpose and the actual mechanism of it aren't fair in the least. (i'm thinking of the ESRB and the MPAA here, as a semi-similar concept.)

note: i'm not defending this approach at all. i find it pretty offensive. but i understand the realities of the situation. sony's always been this way -- i'm sure we only know a fraction of the games that were rejected. some of the famous examples are games i would have bought, some are not. either way, it's dissatisfying. nintendo doesn't have concept approval, incidentally, so i'd like to see things ported to the GC. =)

The idea that stores don't have room is just silly. I mean common. You don't hear that reason in the movie/music biz. It's bullshit anyway you slice it. Fucking stores like EB and GS should do a better job stocking their stores with more software and less fucking toys and gimmicky shit that no one thinks about going in there for.

Oh and Target/Walmart/Bestbuy and pretty much all stores with video game sections are a joke. Only Frys dedicates a lot of shelf/floor space to the video game market that I've seen.

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Originally posted by ferricide
nintendo doesn't have concept approval, incidentally, so i'd like to see things ported to the GC. =)

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i didn't know that. whatever happened to the seal of quality, anyway? :chick:

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Originally posted by epmode
i didn't know that. whatever happened to the seal of quality, anyway? :chick:

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Nintendo's "Mario Club" (their concept approval department) died with the N64.

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Originally posted by Mr_Furious
The idea that stores don't have room is just silly. I mean common. You don't hear that reason in the movie/music biz. It's bullshit anyway you slice it. Fucking stores like EB and GS should do a better job stocking their stores with more software and less fucking toys and gimmicky shit that no one thinks about going in there for.

Oh and Target/Walmart/Bestbuy and pretty much all stores with video game sections are a joke. Only Frys dedicates a lot of shelf/floor space to the video game market that I've seen.

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Well in my area at least Game sales are poor. Walking into the local TRU you'll find the $10 PS2/PSone shovelware rack empty and everything else rotting away. It seems like te only good sellers are budget titles or the highest profile titles.

I think we're getting closer to Japan in software retail. Giving a game shelf space if it sells but dropping the price in record time if it's flopping. *-neo

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Originally posted by ShineAqua
What happened to the days of Tengen? Why can't they just publish it unofficially like back in the day? Fuck Sony, they're out to kill the 2D market.

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Read up on your game history. Tengen got fucked up by Nintendo in court (and deservedly so, probably). Nobody would dare try that shit ever again.

I thought Tengen won most if not all of the lawsuits? Though I could be wrong considering I haven't spent much time researching the entirety (I fucking hate that word) of this topic.

Well Tengen actually illegally stole the designs for Nintendo's lockout chip from the patent office, so, no, they didn't win the lawsuits. They lost big time and that is why so few Tengen Tetris games are on the market.

Yes one can say that you could just not steal the designs for the lockout/BIOS/whatever for the PS2, but that would mean reverse-engineering, and reverse-engineering a PS2 is Im sure much much more complex than reverse-engineering a NES.