Very nice article liked the well oiled feel and flow and also the helping hand analogy really helped me.

Good read. It's so hard in the business world to start up something new and with you in complete control. Nowadays, the only to have complete control is to have loads of money, and that's something you don't have when you just start out.
Hopefully with the Revolution and the LIVE arcade* that will give indie's a little more money to start moving up in the world without too much risk.

*the arcade supports indie games, don't they? Not sure about that. They could anyways.

You are right the big umbrella of doom will decend and spread the T-virus everywhere hahahaha

Well as the Industry progresses to better graphics and more techcy production costs are gunna go up, so the whole VC idea in the Revo could be the saviour that we are looking for

As for many studios developing one game series, is that all that bad. I mean perhaps after Prime 3, Retro could try something else, but would you say that HAL should try something else other than Kirby and Smash Bros?

Smashing article, the above quote sums things up for me pretty much. I do prefer to see more trust based partnerships, but sadly it's a way many don't have the time / patience for in this industry...

Not all buy-outs are bad I've got to think - another recent SEGA buyout Creative Assembley (CA) has only helped then with more resources and a dedicated publisher- of course I could be wrong.

The problem with buyouts is as time goes on, the number of games independant companys reduce.

Given long enough, extrapolateing out, there could only me one multimedia company by the end of the century.
I find that scary, and can only hope the trend is reversed soon.

Good one.

I must again point out about the excellent work that Sumo have done converting and creating a full console game out of Sega's arcade IPs.

Yes great article. I dont like it one bit either. The difference between Microsoft and Nintendo is Nintendo gives companies the benefit of their great talent. Whereas Microsoft just throws money at them.

This link really displays this. Its about how the development of Metroid Prime went. It really proves how great Nintendo's contribution is to its developers.

www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/39/11

It also shows how truly amazingly dedicated Shigsy is.
Check it OUT!

( Edited on 16.07.2006 21:50 by Slydevil )

How you find interesting stuff to talk about every week is beyond me, but you do it very well!

Great stuff, agree with everything!

I can't belive Microsoft actually bought lionhead. I'd sooner pay to get rid of them.

but lionhead are awesome...anyway, good job james as always.

Its odd that Jeff Mintier was working on "Unity" at Lionhead.
Then Unity got canned and most of the code was used to make the (super cool) Visualizations for the Xbox360.

Now Lionhead is owned by microsoft, yet Jeff Minter still works independently.

Good read, I agree with most of the points in there.

A little something I thought of though is how buyouts actually affect the studio's working environment the second they get bought, many staff "jump ship" at the mention of the term buyout! Poor Rare, they really are a shadow of their former selves. I don't know how it went for other members of development houses but I would imagine being restricted to certain titles would really crush a staff member's creative aspirations and force them to move onto smaller developers, or produce mediocre, passionless products.

I know it would bother me if I had spent time creating an awesome idea, characters, game mechanic etc, only to have some suit tell me I had to make it appeal to a wider demographic and have another suit say "But how do we market this for today's gamer..?" etc. It would seriously force me to look elsewhere for employment.

Indeed.
Only in some places (eg, UK) there is no "elsewhere".