Morgoth

A modern RPG (Akshun RPG) set in Planescape, or Planescape like world would be pretty rad though. Obsidian?

Why? Why not? Sorry, you have to give a reason why you think a possible new NOLF would lack the charm of it's predecessor. Unless I've missed something majorly, your statement doesn't make any sense at all. Monolith can still make a kicking NOLF.

Drakensang is very average. Not bad, it does technically everything fine, but it lacks the brilliance and maturity of a Bioware or Obsidian RPG. This year is a good year for games, especially for RPGs. Dragon Age, ME2, AP, Aliens, Risen... man, that's 5 RPGs, in a single year? Is I in heaven?!!11

Mass Effect. This time in German.

I'm curious what this new Blizzard MMO will be all about. They said it will be fundamentally different from WoW, so I keep my fingers crossed. Rumors say they want to bring Starcraft Ghost back, and add a MMO component to it.

Why?

I don't believe Monolith have the rights to NOLF. Of course they could always do a "Project Origin" and just make a NOLF-like game, but Contract JACK didn't go down well and I'd be surprised if they suddenly went back to that franchise after all this time. A " Project Origin" is the easiest way to a new NOLF-like game, but it's never going to happen. :/ Hey, they managed to get the FEAR brand back from Sierra. Perhaps they secretly also got the NOLF brand back as well. After all, Sierra is practically no more, so what use would they have keeping the property? Monolith is also working on a new unannounced title for a while now, with Craig Hubbard (the NOLF man) as creative head. That gives me at least some hope they're working on a new NOLF game for a while now.

Not entirely true. They've 11,5 million active subscibers, and they charge 12.99 each month. 12.99*11,5 = ~150 million each month. As for the servers. A half year ago Blizzard gave an interview and said all the support and servers etc. cost them about 200 million since 2004. So let's say 200 million in 4 years, that's 50 million a year, that's around 4,2 million a month. 150 - 4,2 and they still make 146 million profit per month. I mean, NOT FRIGGIN BAD!

Actually, I really digged the minimalistic approach of FEAR's level design. No fancy colorful stuff getting in your way, only the cold and deserted office rooms, you and supermutant-voiced badasses. I kinda liked that, it gave FEAR a certain charm. And the action-spooky-action change-game kinda worked pretty well. We'll see if FEAR 2 plays as much challenging and smart as it's predecessor, however if it turns out to be a fast Halo 3 clone I'm gonna get mightely pissed.

Spotted @Bluesnews I've some high standards when it comes to first-person shooters, and the original FEAR is one of my favorite, so consequently I expect the sequel to be at least on par. I hope Monolith doesn't pull a silly "Condemned 2 hokuspokus" on that one. Also worrying is the fact that it was developed parallelly (meaning: leading platform) for consoles, so I fear it might be dumbed down. But at least Monolith is confident enough to release a demo so that we all can make an opinion in prior. And where the heck is my NOLF 3 Monolith???

Oh come on, why using a Mac? Still way too expensive compared with a PC that has the same power.

PS:T was a great game back then, in the dinosaur age. But whenever I try to play it now I get bored with it quickly and then I uninstall it. Guess I don't have the patience for that kind of games anymore.

Vista is slick and efficient. Perhaps I can't really judge that on a weaker system as mine has 4 Gb RAM, but with that it runs like a dream. HD space shouldn't really be a problem in the days of terrabyte hard disks, either. Also, developers will pick it up once DX11 matures (at the latest, when the next-gen console hardware uses DX11 gfx processors) due to many advantages over the stone old Win XP and DX9 API. It's time to let it go. Embrace the awesomeness that is Windows Vista/7.

When we were discussing did Jade Empire sell well Sawyer said that AAA titles need to sell about 1 million units to make profit/break even. So, yeah, I would say those are good numbers. http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/tomb-rai...-sales-hit-1-5m Apparently not always. Ah, another great example how publisher like to screw around. They sell 1,5 million units, and as a result they lay off 30 people plus want to make Lara now attractive to girl gamers. Great thinking!

Word play. I love it when people can't think outside of genres.

Pretty sexy.

Now this is getting interesting. *gets the popcorn*

North Korean MBAs are very prestigious. I would argue with Volourn about this issue, but I don't have any confidence in emerging victorious, so I'll just RUN LIKE HELL Also, is EA's ownership of Bioware total? I think it is? Yes, it is. But apparently EA hasn't got a clue about what is going on: http://dragonage.bioware.com/forums/viewto...m=135&sp=60 From Lethlar's post in the above thread: And the chief of EA thinks that DA: Origins is a 'game about dragons' I hope someone did get him the memo or emailed him... Then Ashi984 wrote this: For this, I too, am very grateful. When I fist read this I was and and But then I realized that this is actually a good thing; it means that EA isn't controlling anything at Bioware at all.... EA closing Pandemics branch in Brisbane, Australia is about the same as Carlsberg closing its brewery in a small town near Copenhagen to move all of the production lines for beer etc. to one town in Jutland, Denmark. It is, of clourse, bad for the people it will affect, but necessary, I think, in these financial times. Probably some european EA branch that didn't get the memo? Seriously. DA is completely in Bioware's hands. They have the facilities and marketing team to handle their baby on their own. They don't need to be babysitted by EA. But EA is still needed for the legal stuff, the VO work outside of English, the distribution. They surely have to have a clue by now that DA will be released soon?

You know that 80-90% of ME Xbox sales was before Bio was bought up right? Bioware also made a considerable chunk of profit margins out of the 360 deals, and that money is now also EA's money.

Yeah, I didn't really follow AoC/WAR too much lately, but it seems many players are returning to WOW. AoC has a lot of server mergers going on, but I think WAR is still doing (relatively) well, even though it's hardly the WoW killer that Mythic hoped for. For SWTOR, Bioware needs to attract people that aren't so much into Wow, lest having the same effect like WAR (people returning to WoW after 1-2 months). I guess they hope to get the Kotor fans into the fold, and Star Wars fans in general. At least TOR doesn't try to pull a WoW, so they just might succeed in their endeavor. Edit: Man all these typos. No single post without editing I guess lol.

No. They invested 800 millions into Bioware-Pandemic (the talent, the infrastructure, the assets) plus all properties owned by these two. You can argue whether that was a good deal or not, but for some reason, Johnny Riccitello thought it was. Not our problem, not Bioware's problem. QFT. This is a long term investment for EA. They don't expect to make 800 million off one or two titles with this relationship. I'd guess EA expects to have made that 800 million back around the time KotOR online hits. I'd be more interested in hearing what EA will do to Mythic, since Warhammer Online seems to have stalled out pretty hard after its launch. That will be a good indicator of how they will handle Bioware down the line if the bleep hits the fan. Hmm. the worst thing that could happen is if they shut down Bioware Austin if SWTOR fails. Then the docotrs would pick them up and merge/assimilate those who want to move to Edmonton into Bio Edmonton. But I doubt both studios get shut down for that. And hey, I thought WAR has some 1 million active subscribers? Isn't that supposed to be brilliant?

It's like with every step you take you have to throw up a little bit huh?

No. To me, it seems Bethesda just didn't bother using MoCapturing. Looks all hand animated to me. Not that this really bothers me too much.

ME sold 2,5 million units on the 360 alone. Add the PC sales, and you have 3 million. Now don't tell me those aren't good numbers. When we were discussing did Jade Empire sell well Sawyer said that AAA titles need to sell about 1 million units to make profit/break even. So, yeah, I would say those are good numbers. Indeed. 1 million is the magical number that makes the boss smile. Everything above, and you might even end up getting a hug.

No. They invested 800 millions into Bioware-Pandemic (the talent, the infrastructure, the assets) plus all properties owned by these two. You can argue whether that was a good deal or not, but for some reason, Johnny Riccitello thought it was. Not our problem, not Bioware's problem. Bioware now can even take more money as they please. Plus all the benefits (facilities, ressources, knowledge) they can share by being part of EA. Seems like Bio knows it's shyt.