Kutaragi heads new Sony-Namco Bandai venture |
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It is no secret that Sony's relationship with third party developers isn't the best and smoothest of relationships. During the time when the PlayStation 3 was still boxed up, there were some reports that Sony was pressuring devs to release games immediately even though they were not yet entirely finished.Regardless if those are true or not, Sony came up with a decision that will put away those hushed talks for good. The company recently teamed up with Japan's Namco Bandai to put up a new venture called as Cellius. The main task of the new company is to develop games that will exploit the advanced capabilities of PS3's Cell processor.
What's most interesting about this is that Mr. Ken Kutaragi himself will lead the new company. While he will continue serving as chairman of SCE, Kutaragi will also man the executive director post for Cellius. Furthermore, Cellius is 51% owned by Namco Bandai and the remaining ownership belongs to Sony. Also, it was mentioned by one Sony representative that Cellius will also be designing software for regular PCs, handheld devices, and mobile phones.
Well, this could mean big for Sony. The PSP for example, as great as it is, is kind of lacking in the games department. Nokia on the other hand, has been threatening to re-renter the games market. But more importantly, we all know that main competitor Microsoft has been big lately on the connection between X360 and operating system Vista.
There's only one thing we could derive from this development. It is as if Sony is telling others to "bring it." And in the end, this is going to be good for all of us.
18 Jumps Custom firmware 5.50GEN-D now out
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Comments [refresh]
does this mean good games? x.x
YESSS
Nokia re-entering the games market?! Bwaaa haha haha haa...oh...ee...hee...a hee. N-gage?! A Ha ha ha ha hoo hooo hoo hoo ha....cough...ahhhh funny. :)
Man, that's cool. When I say cool, I mean cool as in being real, not fake like how *****az try to act all gangsta-like. *****az are gross, stupid, annoying, stinky, dirty, super horny (rapes non-black girls), and they are ugly as sin can be! ;)
I was pumped when I first started reading this. Thinking that Sony is finally going to step up to the plate and start kicking some ass with their "superior" knowledge of the PS3's capability. Hell, Nintendo made Zelda and MS made GoW, so where is Sony's big ticket (Gran Turismo doesn't count at all). But, when I read that they will also be developing software and other stuff. Not focused on games. I'm wondering something. Sony, do you really expect to compete in this battle if you half ass everything. MS throws the big bucks at the Microsoft Games department. They really do a bang up job on their games. Anyone play Age of Empires. Sure, they usually don't have an original idea (Command And Conquer pioneered Real-Time Strategy after all) but they do turn heads. Where is Sony on all this. They have all these seperate processors sitting practically unused because developers have never been faced with this kind of SKU... and Sony isn't doing jack. This is their attempt? 49% of a company called Cellius. So Sony, what are you going to Sell-Us this time? When you take three of those processors and turn them into the most realistic physics engine known to the virtual world, then you'll be making some headway. Until then, I think I may be worried that this Cellius project/company may be a lot of fanfare without a bang.
Why doesn't Gran Turismo count? Because PD keeps delaying their games? I'll give you that, but when they do come out, they're usually pretty darn spiffy by most peoples' standards.
And Command + Conquer didn't pioneer the RTS genre. The first Warcraft game came out first. C+C didn't come out until around the same time as Warcraft II.
I agree with the rest of your concerns about the new company, though. With what was said in this article, it seems to me that the new company will be lacking focus by developing for the PS3, PC, cell phone, etc. Pick one, maybe two platforms (e.g.: PS3 and PSP), and do them well. They need some serious first-party lovin' that has been sorely lacking. That's Nintendo's biggest strength. And MS is working on improving that with the 360 and doing fairly well at it so far. Their first party games are coming along nicely and they're doing an incredible job with services offered over Live and superior home network integration.
Sony's sort of coughing up the PS3 like a hairball onto the market and expecting everyone else to fill in their vision of what the machine could/should do. "Okay, here's this great new machine! Go! Make it work good! ....Come on.... Do it! ...Please? ...Pretty please? I'll date your ugly sister if you help me out!" IMHO, they need to lead the charge here and come up with something that shows us some of their big ideas. I don't think Cellius will have the focus to pull it off.
What I don't get is why they don't leverage their wholly-owned Polyphony Digital for more than just the GT and TT games. PD has been great at showcasing some of the graphical prowess of each PlayStation console so far except for PSP. They need to increase manpower to get games out in a more timely fashion, which would also give them the ability to take on more projects for each console instead of just 2-3 games per hardware generation.
Think you will find it was actually DUNE on the Amiga which lead to command and conquer and also Warcraft.