Quote:You guys are off your rocker.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all have sterling reputations as publishers (unlike Activision, EA, etc.).
Twisted Metal was granted 2 SIGNIFICANT extensions and took four years to KINDA complete (which is well above the average for a game that size with the same studio size). No one on ESP has ever said a bad thing about Sony (despite a tradition in the game design world of bashing bad publishers).
There is certainly something crappy at work, but it isn't what you say it is.
Only place Sony has lagged lately is marketing. It's not surprising considering the financial struggles the company as a whole is facing lately.
Sony's advertising department has always sucked.
Sony isn't having "financial troubles" they just got a pretty bad ass kicking this generation by entering the console race late and not having a significant power advantage over the X-box 360. They weren't able to just spend money to out preform Microsoft like they could against Sega, Atari, and Nintendo. So while they sold a bunch of PS3's the money it cost for them to compete with Microsoft hurt their profits.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo hardly have sterling reputations. Sony is probably the worst of the three when it comes to customer service and supporting their games.
Sony and Microsoft both have had class action lawsuits filed against them for excessive hardware failure for X-box 360 and PS2. Sony made no efforts to replace broken PS1's and PS2's outside of charging users $90 plus shipping to replace broken units with refurbished ones.
Sony's first PSP model shipped with dead pixels, had a wifi device which would overheat the system, and the UMD tray is the most fragile dust collecting piece of shit ever conceived. The only thing they voluntarily replaced PSP's for were the ones which had dead pixels straight out of the box.
The Nintendo Wii had a similar issue with the Wifi device overheating the Wii's GPU. They replaced Launch Wii's with refurbished models but you lose all the content on your system. Meaning you lost every game you downloaded off the Wii Channel, and they give you a refurbished unit instead of an actual new one. So i just traded in my broken Wii and bought a new one. I was already fucked but at least the Wii i have now is a different model which doesn't overheat and isn't fucking used.
Sony and Nintendo have both had their servers hacked numerous times. Nintendo was smart enough to hash their users credit information. But Sony did an extremely sloppy job protecting their users information. Not only that but they did nothing to enhance their security after cutting Linux support from the PS3 antagonizing the world hacking community. Microsoft has had it's Live servers hacked as well but the damage has been minimal and they have had hardly any downtime due to such attacks.
It took Sony months to produce an actually secure PSN. Besides the fact they lost customer data. The fact their entire online service was disrupted is pure evidence that Sony either doesn't spend money on their software. Or everyone they hire is incapable of really doing what they are being paid for. I really doubt Sony hires morons and everything bad that has happened is the fault of the people they hire.
Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft were in violation of a patent for rumble technology. Sony was the only company which refused to settle out of court for said violation. Not a huge deal but it's a good example of their attitude and the fact that they screw up and refuse to take responsibility for it unless they are forced to.
Sony's post launch support is notoriously terrible. They spend more money patching the PS3 and Vita to disrupt piracy then they do to patch their own games. Nintendo is pretty shitty too but they openly admit to not being in competition with the PS3 or 360, especially in online gaming. I'm baffled you can ignore that.
All things considered none of us know the real details of TMX's development. But considering Dave and ESP are experienced game developers. I have a very hard time believing they just couldn't make the game work.
It has all the signs of poor management written all over it. The game started as a discount title programmed by a small team. A small team that was built with the intention of making smaller discounted games. Then the game (which is a Sony game) goes to full retail.
All we can do is come to conclusions. But i think not giving ESP the benefit of the doubt is kind of messed up. Especially considering how Sony handles the TM franchise.
I mean TMHO was basically made because Sony had no IP's anyone liked. The PSP was doing awful and it had no good action or online games. So they needed a mascot game with online play and hired Incog to make a rushed version of Twisted Metal on a portable system no one has developed for.
What has ESP really done for you to come to the conclusion that ESP dicked around for 4 years leeching off Sony's generosity and gave them an unfinished game?
Remember in 2005 when Sony said this was in game? Then the Killzone 2 we got had less animations, physics, particle effects, characters on screen, and gained an unstable frame rate?
I'm sure they just meant it was rendered on the PS3 with no power consuming gameplay elements. It's just a cartoon using the PS3's graphical capabilities. But they know when they say shit like that it will be misinterpreted. They intentionally put stuff like this out to mislead people.
I think giving Sony the benefit of the doubt over ESP is ignorance.
I'd give Sony the benefit of the doubt if my TMB disk worked in my PS3. Otherwise i'm just going to assume they are so stingy with money that you can attribute nearly every flaw in their hardware and software to the fact they don't seem to pay the people they hire.
4 years of development. But how much was spent to develop it? How many people were literally working on it? Was it 4 years straight? You know people talk about Duke Nukem Forever as if that game took over a decade to make. But the truth is Gearbox knocked it out in less then a year just using the older builds of it as a design guide. People just say it took over a decade to develop because they hate it and want to paint it in the most negative light possible because they are vindictive nerds.
I don't think that if 4 straight years of development went into Twisted Metal that it was with a full team. I also think the actual game we got was the same game that was in production 4 years ago. It clearly has elements from TMB2 in it.
I don't think they had more then one person designing/modeling the levels with possibly a couple of artists to make textures. Steve was making 3D models for the game and i don't think that was part of his actual job. Doesn't that sound like they might have not had a large full team working on it 4 years straight?
Also i don't buy that Sony sold the game for $60 to recoup any losses. There is no way it cost the same to make Skyrim, MGS4, or GTA4 as it did Twisted Metal. I think they figured they could sell the game for full price because it's not a mainstream game and it's has no direct competition.
If it cost half as much to make Twisted Metal as it did MGS4 i would be stunned.