WTF

NFS:The Run would've run bad. I mean forget the development costs for a second, that game had a pretty strong advertising budget. Sure you can get the invdividual event things for cheap but I'm sure the marketing budget was definitely sizeable for that one (I guess I could find out if I really wanted to, I'm pretty sure some of my event management contacts from the time I worked in advertising still do major promos). I suppose that's why there's a new NFS coming out soon but honestly the brand needs a year to recover from brand fatigue. It's pretty much similar to the undercover period. Hot Pursuit I'm sure made money but last year's releases I doubt it. Thing is job losses could mean anything technically . I mean we know how the industry works with contracts. Though restructuring yeah that's never a good sign for employees. Seriously as long as EA is still squatting on the Porsche license make a NFS: Porsche Unleashed 2 (I have no idea how much it sold but I'm sure it'll appeal to a decent market as a mid-budget downloadable title).

I'm currently wondering if I should upgrade to a 3G model. Going by my current calculations for all the games I'm getting the 3G works out to be £25 more than the wife for me. Is it worth the added £25 I wonder. edited to add: I'm definitely getting uncharted, wipeout, and lumines (retail); and escape plan plus motorstorm for dl. As for the rest I'll wait to see when the prices go down for a few titles.

Outside of the whole 10 dollar bit I've a rule. If its a developer I want to support I'll buy the game on release whatever the price because I want them to continue making games. Day 1 sales are what technically matter the most to devs and pubs. For instance right now I'm sorry EA but I'll wait on Syndicate it really doesn't seem like something i want to spend 27 pounds on during release same goes with the darkness 2. I would love to play both of them but I can wait. However I do want to support Binary Domain because it's pretty nice (- try the japanese demo) and I'll be getting it day one even if it's going to be the same week as the vita. I'll be getting the last story mostly because I would like to encourage NoE to release games in Europe like this and even though the guy was 'let go' for revealing info about localisation I'd like to support his and the team's endeavours [though god the voice acting is horrid - it's like panto mixed with downtown abbey[guh]. way worse than xenoblade] Most of the time I'll always buy new unless it's games with no online that I wanted to wait for a price drop. Last game I bought used was Splatterhouse. For someone like me it's generally an issue of taste and who I'd like to support. As for mirror's edge, boy it's been ages. That game dropped like a rock when it came out. I remember buying it new for 9-12 pounds 2-3 weeks after it came out. Also oddly enough as it with several EA games I ended up getting it for free on the PC and it's now registered to origin. I do recall telling my wife (fiancee back then) not to shoot everyone cause it just required a lot running and combat but she said it was too hard XD.

Oh don't mind me, I tend to write a lot especially when I'm distracted and take longer like right now when I got caught up on the phone thanks to work -.- Actually several games have been quite disastrous. I'm betting at least 50% of rebellion's games this generation flopped. Several games have flopped is why studios such as bizarre creations, realtimeworlds, etc closed down. THQ shut down the guys who made de blob 2 because it was a massive failure and just failed to move units. There's plenty of major failures where games didn't make their investments. I remember back in 2000 Alice and Undying flopped - basically one flopped and the other flopped since they realised this wasn't going to sell enough and cut marketing on it. Honestly I'm surprised EA even tried to go ahead with Alice 2. While it wasn't a major flop I'm pretty sure they're expecting a longtail via PC DD for it to be profitable (maybe console DD as well). We have had several games lose money because publishers and developers took risks, which the audience didn't react well to Thing is certain genres are niche and if devs and publishers realised that and cut the budget down it would work better. I'm sure for instance Twisted Metal will be decently profitable if it sells around 500k since it was a team of 35 over 3 years. But even though team Ico is about 30 members due to 7 years dev time I doubt The Last Guardian will be profitable unless it sells by name and honestly I doubt it'll cross the million barrior. You don't need to print 1 Million discs for a game to not break even. In fact honestly speaking it'll be cheaper to print a large number of discs than to print a small number on the overall costs. The issue is there's a lot of overhead costs which aren't be recouped, dev costs, multiplatform costs, localisation costs sometimes, marketing, salaries, rent so on and so forth. Those do count. It's not something that's quite simplistic. At the end of the day unsold copies of games like shadows of the damned being sold for cheap will be written off as bad debt since there's not much you can do. I do wonder who lost the most out of brutal legend. I know activision were owed and they wanted that money but couldn't collect. I believe EA didn't make a killing out of it either but I do get the feeling that outside of mismanagement by DoubleFine they should've seen the most benefit there to be fair.

USE the Eurogamer50 code and head to THQ espana to get Warhammer Space Marine for 4.97 Euros which works out to 6-7 dollars and 4.12 quid. Or you could use that code for other thq games for halfprice.

I was just talking about launch/launch window games really. Outside of launch games there's a lot that I want to get like ragnarok odyssey, tales of innocence R, persona 4: golden, dragon's crown. Disgaea 3: Absence of detention is a definite buy since i didn't buy or play the dlc and just finished one cycle of the game - plus i really liked that title compared 1 and 2 and still haven't played much of 4 despite having bought it months ago.

I don't think you quite get how risks and investments work when it's not an individual financier. If a company that's not an investment firm but a publisher or producer of goods is willing to invest in a product then they need to have returns of some kind. They aren't going to write off that investment but will try to salvage whatever they can. Firstly all these models and descriptions work on the assumption that all these companies have been around and will be around forever; when in fact with the exception of a few most will die out due to the vagaries of human taste and culture. Firstly the issue coming out here is that we're mixing up individuals and corporations. Developers are also usually companies and thus by definition corporations or to be extremely precise they are usually limited liability companies. Most developers aren't a 5 man team working in a garage but a company that has anywhere between 25 and 500 people. That's practically a decent sized company. When you work for a company that's of that size regardless of the industry you work in, you do not expect to be paid beyond the tenure of your job. IPs don't work the way that because you created something or worked on the creation of something you are perpetually owed something. For instance you have a friend who 'worked' on a project that you were overseeing and while he/she contributed something to the project for them it was just a job and once it's done they move on to the next. People cannot expect to be entitled for what is essentially a job that they were contracted to do. If they don't do it, someone else will. However if you were the one that came up with the idea then it depends on the 'sell'. If your idea is a surefire hit and publishers are convinced of your ip they will offer you either a decent monetary compensation or part ownership of the ip or even profit-participation. You don't usually get this until you've achieved some recognition. It's the case for any career. Publishers try to own ips in most cases because developers - talent and companies are unstable. They spend a huge amount of capital investing in a project, if it collapses they try to salvage what they can in terms of assets because this investment comes from profits and capital. Generally when you run a company that's past break-even you work on profits and credits. You do not work on running capital as running capital keeps the employees, buildings and other infrastructural capacities. You've always got to make sure you have that on you else you'll be forced to run at a lower efficiency. When companies publish uncertain ips they are taking these risks. Now once a product is sold and it's gained some mindshare and marketshare the publisher is able to take more risks and publish more games like this by hiring developers to make similar games and carry on those ips. Because these products not only increase profits but also grow companies - it's a positive and negative thing on many perspectives : negative particularly if the growth is too fast and uncontrolled and positive because the ips that succeed will always find new homes. So here we have the publishers who want to continue with an ip and similarish products. Now lets take the developers side, they are the creatives. For most of them to continue making the same game forever is incredibly tiring. They want to take risks on the creative side. Most of the time they wouldn't have the money to do this since they are hired to do a set job and honestly not every idea is actually good or feasible - gamers are a fluctuating market and the one thing that's very true about gamers is that they do not like formulas to be tampered with much. Publishers know this, but developers don't want to do this since they know that they can hit on a formula that gamers could enjoy. So it's a battle of keeping the group. When individuals working for developers tire of working for a company they leave. Mind you, most people only have contracts for as long as a project is on. In the film, gaming and certain IT sectors people are usually hired on a contract basis. Companies do not have an obligation to keep them on after that - if they person is good they'd like to keep them on but otherwise they can leave. Sometimes developers end up with sub-par talent or people who don't necessarily get along. Other times simply due to issues a company comes across trouble and is forced to shut down. Developers aren't always the financially savvy firms. Most of the time due to some reason or the other after a point they just fail. Publishers try to keep the ip because when companies fall apart like that ips and everything they own will temporarily be in limbo and it could be a long wait. Reviving dead ips is a challenge. It's better to create a new ip than revive something that's been dead for over 10-15 years. It isn't the publishers responsibility to keep the developer afloat unless they own them and so publishers try to buy out developers to either make sure they run right or just to keep the assets and properties. Sometimes even that's not enough. If a ship's sinking you can't always keep it afloat. Now when we speak of independent developers, they achieve success and usually they are small teams where relatively small returns is good enough for them. Sometimes they can achieve breakout success like Persson did with minecraft. Often they just make enough to be profitable enough to make their next ventures. Here's where the thing works out. A game with a budget of 40k made by 5 people and earns 200k is perfectly fine. It's more than enough for them to keep making things and eventually they'll get bigger and their projects get bigger and they'll enter the other cycle. The reason why THQ and others failed is simple. The previous generation we had several mid-tier midbudget games that were cheap. Developers invested a few million and sales of a million were excellent because it net them between 10 and 20 even after going through distribution channels. What happened in the past 10 years was that the companies that were successful invested a lot more in their games. Even if they invested 50Million they would get back 150 million in games like CoD. Sure it's only 3 times that amount whereas the 40k to 200k is like 5 times the amount. However 100Million and 160k are entirely different amounts. Publishers and developers both saw that happening. They wanted in on that action. It's the reason why they invested a lot of money into their products and went bankrupt. Here's a comparison that helps. Saints Row had a budget of 35Million and it went on to sell 3.8Million to date which makes it profitable (Even though based on earnings it seems like nearly 2Million came via reduced sales and pricedrops). Uncharted games are usually budget under 20Million and UC3 shipped about 4Million and has seen sales of over 3million which makes it more profitable. Now publishers aren't all evil, when sales are really good for internal studios they give pretty decent bonuses and for external studios they give them a percentage of sales. One of the reasons why Insomniac obviously went multiplat is because the truth is they expanded and the resistance and ratchet and clank games were not giving them the sales they had hoped for this generation. They don't mind leaving that ip at Sony and working on new ips and EA gives them control of their new ip because of pedigree (at least I believe they own their ip in this case). Several developers have closed shop, sold ips and done all sorts of things in the past 20 years that publishers were forced to take control of the situation. How many games can't be released today because of licensing issues (look at PSX titles) ? How many games may never exist again because companies fell apart (ips owned by Infrogames and Interplay) and the ips went to limbo and even if revived wouldn't do well (e.g. Shenmue, Homeworld,etc)? Publishers never sought control of ips initially but developers chose to have multiple publishing partners to publish their games and when the devs died out different companies hold publishing rights that it's next to impossible to release them sometimes. At times it's due to things like music as in kingdom hearts which is one of the reasons why it'll be a longtime before you see a kingdom hearts game sold digitally (I believe the singer has the rights to all digital publishing rights for her song regardless of media and since she had a big spat with Disney it's an issue and Square Enix being the dev-pub can't really do much there since Disney is also a pub-licencee). Also sometimes some projects just get so ridiculously expensive because of elongated development times that it's pretty difficult to make them profitable. There's the one thing that I did not mention that needs to be mentioned here - most developer companies are limited liability companies and are limited to the value of the company which is the investment capital of the firm or whatever the stated capital is. So when a publisher takes the risk they know that all they can get back is whatever was contracted to them and if the company was bankrupt whatever they are worth. It is a pretty big risk because there's no guarantee and in a lot of cases they can bring not one but two companies down if things go very south and both aren't very big players. I think something of the sort almost happened to SouthPeak but I'm not entirely certain so I'll leave it at that. It isn't a simple case of they made the game so they should get perpetual money off of it. p,s: A dog race wouldn't be the best comparison . Think of it like horse racing, the publisher is the person who bought the horse, the jockey could be the one who spotted the horse or just excels at being a jockey. If the horse wins everyone gets something, if the horse loses the owner can decide if they want to keep the jockey or not; they'll pay them for the race and whatever they owed them but since they bought the horse they get to keep the horse. The jockey isn't necessarily under their permanent employ.

I bought NeverDead. I got it for £13. I don't think it'll be cheaper than that even if I waited for a few months. It seems like a mid-tier game that I'll enjoy.

Actually not every artist makes insane royalties on what they sell. It's usually between nothing and a mediocre percentage. In the music industry, it generally works this way the label gets the most money out of distribution. For an artist to make that money they need to make their own label. Now even if this label comes under a major record company they'll make a decent earning as compared to being signed on to another label. However for the music industry artists make the most money out of live performances. A live show brings an artist an insane amount of money and most of it goes to themselves and their management. Lets look at it this way, in the past 5-10 years there's been under 50 singles that have sold a million in the UK. But even artists that have barely done 500k make more money than those singles purely through endorsements, partnerships, live performances and things like that. And contracts don't work that way because when you get hired to the industry even if you've worked on a product doesn't mean you get credited for it. Games are much more lenient than the film industry that at least most people do get credited. In a film, the principal and the first production crew staff get credited. The rest it's upto the producers to decide if they should or shouldn't. There's at least 50 VFX artists per film that wouldn't be credited because it's how it works. They have to rely on their employers and showreels to get new work when their short-term contracts expire. You may think it's the shitty end of the stick. But an individual isn't the developer, a company is a developer. In fact in most media firms, publishing and distribution firms prefer to deal with firms because a firm can be sued and there's some chance of some money but it's difficult to sue an individual. Therefore a tiny indie setup might not really get a publishing contract from a major publisher unless they're willing to take the risk. As for ownership, if the creator of the ip doesn't care and wants to give it away it's their call. But most importantly it is the call of the person who runs the developing studio as to whether they should push for ownership of an ip or not. IPs are a dime a dozen, you can create a million space fantasies, medieval fiction and the like and with the right marketing people will buy it. Most creatives are aware of this, so when they are unsure if what they have is a surefire hit they just sell it for the money they need to get the product out and feed themselves and fund future ventures. People think in the short-term and publishers know it can be a risk. (it's why new ips are almost always publisher owned) because they're investing their money. Here's the simplest way to put it. Yes someone did work really hard for this and they might not see future profits from it. But that's the risk they take to get a game out, to keep the company and their lives going. The people who make the games sometimes are less invested in the ips than the people who play them. They are invested in the games but the ips. Not really. Also if someone is going to invest money in you they would like to see returns on their investment. Why should any publisher give a studio a couple of million when they can't see guaranteed returns. They might as well invest in another field or area and see their moneyback. Ultimately it's returns of investments. While we can call faceless publishers evil they too have people who need jobs and have to support families and the like. Publishers and developers both need to survive. The real problem facing the media particularly gaming are analysts, investors and gaming journos who publish information before the consumers can read them. Gaming enthusiast medium is technically far more irresponsible and sees to the demise of studios and lack of jobs more than publishers and developers themselves. The whole game/gamestation thing for instance - what use was it to the consumer for them to publish this info that the company would definitely die soon. Companies lose credit assurance it's not abnormal - happens everyday (I used to work as a financial consultant and getting new creditors and investors for companies like this was Tuesday) . but to publish that info basically leads to a climate where you kill consumer confidence. So people will be afraid to shop in the stores for fear of not getting the products that they ordered thus reducing spending in their stores which would lead to the company being unable to sustain itself and thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. @fuchikoma: lol I don't want to comment on the film industry since technically I'm a part of it though not working for a 'studio' per se. However yes you are unlikely to see profit participation from certain studios. Columbia is decent in that regards and if you really want to see profits faster you'd work on the indie scene. Also every budget is inflated between 5 and 15% what is revealed as the budget is almost always the inflated value(there are exceptions) and I know this personally.

Are we having a Vita launch thread? Just asking cause I really would like to know what games everyone's getting. I know I'm getting Lumines and Uncharted retail. I want to get wipeout but I'm iffy because of the mixed responses which are from very positive to average. Digitally I'm getting Escape Plan(expected to be 12 quid but since i've 5 off it'll be 7) and Gravity Rush. Impulse buys Motorstorm RC(expected 10 quid), Super Stardust (8 quid) I'll wait a bit before getting Katamari, Shinobido, Everybody's golf,Fifa. Maybes inc Dynasty Warriors Next, Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus, Little Deviants Definitely getting about 2-3 retail and 2-4 Download titles which makes it a pretty good launch. Bah this is the first launch where there's too many to choose from.

Thanks for the conf I love the JL model but didn't they do that with a lot of IT companies in the past by giving the employees (every employee) shares in the company. I'm pretty sure MS and Google did that, I know that certain Asian IT firms did it too. In fact yeah MS did do that which is why Gabe who was an early employee made a lot of money cashed out and then started valve. Unfortunately in the case of the IT firms this process only lasts during the initial period whereas the JL model lasts for however long you work there iirc.

if you want to be paid for your product perpetually then you need to make sure your contract that allows you to sell the game be paid for it. Sorry Dean but with this one I'm with TN and HH to an extent. Do you believe that everyone who worked on a film or an album from over 50 years ago still gets paid for it? Why should the audio-engineer who soundmixed an album still be paid for a Beatles Album? It wasn't in his contract. Does the record company get paid? yeah they do. The artist gets paid too if they own the license. An employee of a company that makes a game will not get paid perpetually but the company will and by company I mean the developing company - not the publisher. And that's only if they don't go bankrupt. If a person wants to be perpetually paid for a product they created they need to have contracts that get them paid perpetually. Otherwise they're just employees and you're not going to pay them beyond their tenure at that institution. There is no protectory right generally for people to own what they created unless they created it in their own time these days. It's mostly been that way for a while now. The only way you can permanently gain income from your creation is to create it and market it yourself, write a strong contract that keeps the ip under your ownership or if that fails at least part of it (The tetris guy still makes money from every tetris game sold - pretty sure it's case though you can ask TN since they do sell Tetris titles at EA), or are paid by means of profit-participation. To expect anything else is honestly quite naive. Also when they refer to developers there I'm pretty sure they refer to the company and not the individual.

I'm assuming you guys are up to speed on TWEWY and the fact that the brand continues to live on in Kingdom hearts and will do so for at least 2 games (the 3ds game and the sequel to BBS) and after that depends on reception. The reception to the game was poor, it didn't sell a lot and thus it requires other franchises to boost it. And you can say what you like about Eidos and try to differentiate it from Square Enix but the truth remains that if Square Enix did not inject money into them with their purchase and give them access to their animation studios (which can be seen in Deus Ex and in Thief) all those ips would be left to rot for a fair while and Eidos would be split between a few companies. SE may not be the best but they are definitely doing a good job of managing Eidos IPs and nurturing them with a little help from Canada. Also it is a good thing that they're taking the Hitman series away from IO interactive considering what they decided to do with the new game and letting their new studio opened in Montreal (being managed by the the team that did Deus Ex and now Thi4f) take over the franchise after the next release.

Agreed with what you say but disagree that it's actually what Squeenix had in mind. SE does a lot of games from the old Taito releases such as Space Invaders which had infinity gene 2 years ago and they made a smart purchase of Eidos which has helped them a fair bit by being quite profitable with deus ex and now tomb raider, thief and the next 2 hitman games(whatever we think of it, it'll do about right for the budget). Their PSP stuff is usually good, they have a pretty strong mobile presence which moved from the mobage to the android and ios platforms. Nier was a fluke for them because they worked with AQ Interactive's Cavia for a few games. The director of Nier has since left the company (Right after they were made defunct by absorption into AQ interactive who are right now in turn defunct by absorption into Marvelous Interactive). Square Enix had a deal with AQ on publishing and owning the ips of a few games made by them from Nier to Mindjack which worked out mixed for them. As for what Yante expressed, even Square Enix realises that there's been considerable brand damage done to Final Fantasy with the botched FF14 (According to them) and some degree FF13 and they need to improve on it to regain consumer confidence. As a result they have begun to streamline operations and we can see that the gap between western and Japanese releases are down from a few years to between 3 and 6 months. Forgetting type 0 (Which they didn't release yet probably because they knew they wouldn't be able to release it before the vita release and thus are waiting for a later date plus international version release later in the year to release it - considering the title has been trademarked and some localisation efforts have been going on). We will increasingly see synergy between their developments. Square Enix is relying on the strengths of their western devs and in Japan all they need is to release Dragon Quest and that does insane numbers in a single market. They'll be fine financially. THQ on the other hand seems to possess a body that's disjoint from its head and limbs.

@Dean. lol well didn't notice. The rest was in general though and not aimed at you . As for Atari, yeah that's true but they did release TDU2 which is terrible and only remembered for that silly dance sequence of Oakenfeld's My girl and now have TD:Ferrari somehow. @connorrr Honestly from a financial standpoint, THQ don't really have a lot of fight left in them. They're quite desparate. They have about 46M in cash about barely, lets put this in perspective; even a smallish company like NIS has more cash than that and they only publish niche titles and that too primarily on Sony platforms and some on Nintendo. THQ has 2 major products going to be released on which they have to spend money for marketing. THQ has good distribution channels - in fact that's one of the reasons why they aren't a totally terrible buy. They do distribute Capcom games in Australia too (just a random fact showing how far it reaches technically). Now Darksiders 2 has a sizeable budget, Metro is developed by an independant studio, 4AA and THQ are the publishers. THQ obviously has invested money in it but if things go sour for them, 4A can still release the game with a different publisher and THQ's remnants can get some fee from the publishing purchase. Those games honestly do not have more than a 2-3M at max selling power right now. They also only count to the next FY which is a good thing as they can't get any lower. But there's a lot of money they have to get rid of. Speaking as a gamer I do not think they should sell any studios but speaking from a financial standpoint - it's best to sell a studio or two. When it comes to costs, Volition must be a cheap operation since it's in Champaign and I hear that it's cheap to live there plus they have some of the best computer science graduates out there. That studio should be their last fortress (probably why they're focussing on inSane there) and of course Montreal with Desiliets. Considering CA subsidies and his vintage they could do something but no game's been announced as yet. Relic while great under THQ is probably a good sell to be fair though they're a decent revenue earner. Thing is CoH has had a minor brand death thanks to the online game. Homeworld has been dormant for nearly 9 years now. It has a tiny audience and anyone can make their own new space game if they wanted. Homeworld as an ip is mostly dead unless it is brought back with a decent budget sort of like Syndicate is without a genre change hopefully. Vigil is the one that'll need help. Darksiders is a decent ip but the MMO isn't going to go far and Vigil's basically working on the two of them. Obviously we'll find dev switching from the MMO to Darksiders which would mean the MMO ends up dying a slow brutal death as there's no idea when it could even come out and they admitted they need help developing it. Here's the thing - outside of Darksiders 2 - everything is either licensed or could be sold to other publishers. It all depends on what the market dictates. If they don't feel confident and the market value declines to a ridiculous degree (which it already has) then they could buy themselves out and hold it but it would make getting investments difficult and thus they'd have to sell publishing rights for a few games (one of the nightmare scenarios) or they'd file for bankruptcy after the release of the games set for FY2013. Regardless THQ is mostly done for as a major publisher, they can refocus on digital distribution if they can cut the weight. They'll need to cut down all massive budget productions that are being preproduced right now. If there were new consoles it'll be good for them but seeing the tepid response to the WiiU they must be worried which is why they were hoping for new consoles from MS and Sony. It's going to be a lot more painful before it gets better. p.s. I doubt we'll see another Darksiders from them after this at least not before 2015/16. p.p.s. This generation will see the death of the mid-tier game because of inflated budgets. Selling 1M with those budgets isn't profitable, they need to look at niche publishers who've been forced to cut budgets. A good example again here is NIS who were in serious trouble before Disgaea 4 and a 40k sales on the vita for D3 portable was good enough. Atlus works similarly too.

Not if you're me. I've mild OCD and if anyone, anyone messes up my order that will be highly annoying. If people want to borrow things or take things out of the shelves they best be prepared to keep it back exactly where they found it. Everyone who knows me, fortunately adheres to that Organisation is nice after a spring clean though. Everything in my life is either meticulously organised or just left to the whim of things, there's no middle ground (ironic for me who's normally the grandmaster of the middleground according to my real world friends :/ - hate that title)

Actually Dean THQ hold the license to publish it, if THQ is going down I doubt gamesworkshop will let THQ keep the license. Here's the stupidest thing that I personally believe THQ is doing and that's basically publishing digital games developed by people from Atari who worked on classics such as Centipede, Yars revenge etc. If you take a look at last year's Yar's Revenge you can see how bad that was. Atari right now is a crap developer to be honest and despite their pedigree most of the devs on board last made games before many of us were even born. It's like asking the buggles to come out with a new pop hit. The issue with THQ is poor management, their CEO isn't terrible but when the CEO takes a 50% paycut it means some serious crap is going on. Lately they've made filings with the SEC and that usually happens when there's inside info that something good or terrible is going to happen and looking at the current state I think we know what's going to happen. Their current market capital is under 38M and their shares are 53cents a pop. A NASDAQ delisting is highly likely just like what happened with Atari and they've already said that if they don't keep it above $1 for 4 weeks before September it will be delisted (they can appeal after that but unless there's a massive portfolio it's unlikely). THQ's primary breadwinner wasn't any of the core games but rather the casual games they made for the Wii and DS. When Disney pulled their licenses they pretty much had the wind knocked out. They focussed on core because they felt that's where the money lies and it's not entirely wrong. However the market has serious issues right now. People are competing to make the next MW, BF, Halo etc. Of course Nintendo ips such as Mario are stronger but the thing is selling a million is no longer enough for companies like them. When you put massive budgets to make the next big thing selling a million will not bring back the results. Instead if they focussed on making smaller niche games on a lower budget they would have been better served. Relic is doing ok with PC sales but it's not enough. Saints Row did 3.6 M till Dec and 200k this year (because there weren't many releases). Now that newer releases are coming up it's unlikely that it'll even do 100 per month and the sales have petered out. Saints Row is their biggest ip right now. Darksiders 2 will probably do another 2-3 Million if they release it in Summer (which they are now instead of Autumn) because of the draught of games in that period. They have to put more resources into it to release it as polished as possible but they won't delay it because it's a matter of life and death for the company now. Most of the other titles in their belt are new ips. UFC could've done ok but the last one flopped and that puts the new game in a precarious position as it has to regain the audience that it had with the first title. Every other game is either going to sell sub 1.5 M (if that) or do worse. At this point it's literally like watching the slowest car crash in the world and it's not great :/. Honestly they hope to cut down 160Million with all those admin and sales jobs cuts and closures. But even that who knows. It's most likely going to be bought out and the most likely candidate for a buyout right now is Warner Brothers. With stocks tanking like they are and market capital just falling someone with 60-90M could potentially buy them out and that's what shareholders would hope as if they go bankrupt everyone loses inc gamers.

Organisation is a pain. With films it's alphabetical when it's the pulp releases but the classics and specials go to a secret storage where they're categorised based on year of release. My games are categorised based on release as well with games there's a reason when you categorise it that way you keep a history of your purchases and what you were doing when it was out and also remember games that you haven't played. Speaking of non-game purchases bought a lot of furniture the last 4-5 weeks. I bought a refurb iMac for my wife. Got new iPhones, cases, protectors, waiting for my new satchel to be delivered (Unicorn Cognac), actually in the process of ordering new boots (wondering if I can pull a favour from that handmade store I did a promo for last year). Bought a lot of classic PK Dick and Asimov. New lenses for the 5D. Mostly Birthday and tax returns.

I've mostly been buying Non-game stuff since my last post. However here's a list of what I did end up buying: PS3 House of the Dead: Overkill Extended Cut Soul Calibur V (If you liked 2 and 4 you'll like this) FF XIII-2 Ltd Collector's Edition PSN Rochard Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath Final Fantasy V and VI Amy PC Anno 2070 (screw you UBI DRM not for this but for keeping Heroes offline while you're migrating servers XD, it's a lot less cumbersome in Anno) Kingdoms of Amalur: The Reckoning Sonic Generations: Casino Night DLC Duke Nukem: The Doctor who cloned me DLC Humble Android Bundle Magicka Stars are Left DLC Dead Space 2 (2 copies me and my brother - price = free) 3DS Kid Icarus classic Resident Evil Revelations with the circle pad pro. I can review the circle pad pro if anyone wants me to. But I will say this, it's worth it. Sure you can play the game without it but this thing makes it a whole lot easier. My Vita is already mostly paid for and I might be paying between nothing (Thanks to some useless old phones and the PSPGo that I traded) to 50 depending on the best offer if it's from Sony directly or from Amazon. That's inclusive of an 8GB memory card and a retail title. I already have the preorder box so I have frobisher says and £5 off of Escape Plan and £10 off of something from gamestation. Edit: I bought Batman: Arkham Lockdown for the iOS and honestly it's pretty similar to infinity blade but it's not bad either to be fair. Wondering if I should get ghost trick, if you have an iPhone or iPad get it on it since it's 6.99 and it is a universal app.

Halo Anniversary with my brother (It was alright, thought we both realised that since we're now playing CE 10 years from now, it really doesn't hold up. It's ok but eh) Tales of the Abyss 3DS (I really enjoyed this game) Story Mode in SC 5

The thread is viewable by lurkers, it would be great if we could keep it to quote and then be revealed or something. I normally just email codes if I have any.

Oh such an amazing read. Loved it when I read it in high school back in the 90s. Considering how it was a satirical look on the idealistic book the coral island I think it stands better off in today's society than the coral island. Wonder if that tells us a negative message.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq5JmuT27mM Been listening to a lot of other stuff like sbtrkt but felt this one was ideal for a new year.

I just did every Kerotan that I came across but after killing each Kerotan I went to the next area and saved or in case it was in a boss-fight I just made sure I killed it again in case stuff happened. I knew there were a few in the bike segments (Those were annoying) so for that particular segment I saved and reloaded a fair few times. The thing about MGS3 is that your state isn't saved until you move to a new area so if you want to save all the things you got you needed to move to a new area. It took me a total of 16 hours and 1.2 playthroughs (Basically I got all the kerotans after I finished two areas after the virtuous mission, it seems like if you've shot them once in a playthrough it counts to the total tally). There's no trophy for alerts, that's in MGS 2 (I got that since it was easy.I would have platinumed it if I had the time to play it through multiple difficulties to get the bandanas and play the other missions). In MGS3 you just need to avoid killing people. You can either play it on very easy and have the ez gun to make it simple or unlock it after one playthrough of collecting the tchinoko (don't eat it!) or of course you can make sure you don't kill people and just use a tranq gun. MGS3 outside of Kerotans is really easy to platinum you can do it in one playthrough if you've got the time and know where the locations are. My wife finished MGS3 3 or 4 times and I'd played it once before (plus I like to explore) so we managed it in a few days.