http://www.geek.com/games/simcity-developer-maxis-is-no-more-ea-shuts-studio-1617111/ granted Maxis ceased to be Maxis when Will Wright left but it's one of those sad days where an iconic developer shuts now. In other news, Eat a Dick EA.
I didn't expect this. The last games didn't get a good reception but this is still very surprising. I always thought The Sims would keep Maxis alive.
The Sims studio still exists, the part of Maxis that made SimCity is the one that was shut down. Personally, I couldn't care less. It's just like when LucasArts closed down: they were great once, but had been reduced to a shell of their former self, so nothing of value has been lost.
Major publishers always shaft their developers, so no new news. Inb4 Criterion make The Sims, and you have bump other sims inside the walls of the house to get a takedown and earn boost.
I mean, after the massive success of SimCity 2013 I just couldn't see this...oh wait. EA hate is now so rampant its hard to believe they were the publisher that helped give us Beetle Adventure Racing!, Cel Damage and Timesplitters: Future Perfect, to name a few. Unless they make some radical changes, I feel like their most creative work as both a publisher and developer is behind them.
Always been more of a console person, but one of the games i loved playing on PC was simcity Shame.....another fugg you to EA
Believe it or not, Activision and Ubisoft easily top EA oh the crap department nowadays. Not that EA got better, but the other two decided to lower the bar even more.
Gaming is in a bad place right now. Capcom and Konami are doing jack and Shit. Sega is hell if I know what Sega is doing. Activision, EA and Ubi Soft are douche nozzles. Nintendo might still pump out the games, but their cooperate policies just make them anti consumer assholes. What's SNK even doing now? They haven't really done anything since KOF XIII. Cave is only doing Mobile crap. I fear for the future of gaming.
New management usually ruins companies. All my favourite devs are dead, apart from Stainless. Nintendo will always be Nintendo so I don't fear much of an issue with them yet.
I think my problems with Nintendo are well documented here. Thank the gaming Gods for Indie developers. Otherwise I'd have nothing new to play anymore.
Only issue I have with Nintendo is not listening to consumers, many want a console Pokemon game but simply won't make it happen as "it won't be new" because every single Mario game they pump out the ass isn't?
Just when I'm ready to end the boycott. Their You Tube Policies. You basically have Free advertising so rather than let those FREE Advertisers profit for their effort in get eyes on the product you decide NO I want a piece of that pie too. OH You still get a cut but we get a cut too OH and you can't play any other games on your channel either. So what does that do? instead of the free advertizing, NOBODY is playing Nintendo games. Nintendo still brings it on the games. I LOVE Kirby. I SO want that new Kirby on the Wii U. But I just have way too many problems with Nintendo to justify giving them money. OH and lest we forget the Amibo thing.
Ubisoft just spreads itself too thin. If they would devote to one game a year, not one game from each franchise each year, they'd probably be in a better place. I have nothing to say in the defense of Activision. I've lost interest in Activision ever since they dropped Luxoflux and consolidated Neversoft into Infinity Ward. As much as people throw SquareEnix under the bus for the FFXIII series and porting everything, FF:Type-0 received incredibly solid reviews, Life is Strange was a risky yet satisfying choice to produce and FFXV is shaping up to be a great game. Also remember that Rockstar, Kojima Productions, Bethesda and Tango Gameworks are still making games. For every Maxis we have shutting down we have solid up-and-coming development teams like the ex-Starbreeze member driven Machine Games to fill the void.
I have no feelings towards Square Enix either way. They are bringing Dragon Quest Heroes over to the West. They can't be that bad.
Totally agree. Both Capcom and Konami are on terrible financial situations. Capcom is only making Street Fighter V because Sony is helping them financially. Who could believe this would be the case 10 years ago? Their business model of throwing DLC on everything, including on discs, several editions of the same game, hurt the company more than helped. It made them to be hated almost everywhere. Konami lost their big football seller a long time ago to EA and can't compete with the cost of licenses. Then they had to hire some other company to make Castlevania games (!!!) and now are probably betting all their chips on MGS V and the next Silent Hill. But don't feel sorry for them, this is the same company that bought Hudson just to kill it, without making money of any of their franchises, including Bomberman. Just imagine a cross-platform 12 player Bomberman game on widescreen TV/monitors. Overall Capcom, Konami, NamcoBandai, Sega, Koei Tecmo... all these japanese companies never managed to move succesfuly to the HD generation. Most of them reached their peak during the 90's, with the Xbox / PS2 being the last consoles they actually made money. Not only they never succeed on the HD generation, they still think AAA games is the only way to go. All these companies have so many great and loved franchises, but they still haven't tried to make simpler "indie game style" using those franchises. Not only that, they really believe mobile games will save their asses. And what about their dumb decisions to not release games worldwide, not even digitally? You all know i dislike digital distribution when it's the only way to go, but it's not what the majority think. They could release digital versions and if the game is succesful, release physical copies later. Indie games like Terraria, RetroCity Rampage, Teslagrad and Giana Sisters, to name a few, are having physical releases months or even a year after their digital launches. If small developers with the help of small publishers can do that, where is the difficulty to a somewhat big and traditional japanese companies?
The only games worth a damn from Square Enix now are the ones made by Eidos. They'd be hilariously fucked if they only relied on their own output (read: Weekend at Square's, the tale of a company trying to survive by propping up the corpse of Final Fantasy).
Let's just be happy they still have Crystal Dynamics, Avalanche making Just Cause for them and United Front Games hopefully making future titles with them. If FFXV does end up being a bust, they'll be pretty heavily hurt from all the time they dumped into that. It's a shame because Japanese developers used to be on the forefront. Now that's definitely not the case.
Didn't they just make a new Kirby game for the Wii U? FF:Type-0 was (probably) good, then Square promptly didn't release it in the West for 4 years, after the console it originally came out on died. I'm seriously up to here with publishers (mostly Japanese ones) refusing to localize their games for the West, then complaining about losing money.
