I’ve seen a lot of money lost trying to port something to PC. I wouldn’t be nearly as sure.

What gives you the idea that a direct-to-video CG movie is going to cost them hundreds of millions?

Easier, but not easy. Furthermore any game (or more accurately game engine) that was in development before a certain date won’t be able to use the latest features, because upgrading will always break something, which you don’t do when you’re finalizing a product.

Flag on the field: Oversimplification of a very complicated issue. Same CPU architectures make it easier, not easy.

I’m willing to bet that Square Enix is partnered with several other companies to produce both the anime series and the CG movie that are helping to foot the bill, as is the common practice in Japanese productions. That’s a much safer business decision than redirecting already tasked resources to producing more…

Bingo.

Switching between computer generated segments and live segments is incredibly jarring in most instances. The only exception I can think of is the Command & Conquer series, largely because it’s a strategy game. You don’t really see the people on the ground, just the battlefield.

Errr, those both were independent ideas by two companies that Valve bought. If I’m not mistaken, both teams that worked on them have moved on from Valve since they released the games.

I think most, if not all, of Yahtzee’s points are completely valid, although very clearly magnified for comic effect. He’s worth taking seriously, but not forming a complete opinion with.

At a high level, many review figures were part of larger enterprises and publications that would be sold as part of a bigger product. A review would be tucked into a newspaper for instance. This meant that the review was not the sole readership draw and as a result, a reviewer was more abstracted away from…

I can guarantee you I don’t talk about censorship much, because I don’t like using the word censorship unless we’re serious.

While this lawsuit is pretty ridiculous coming from this developer, it does bring up an interesting conundrum: Should people really profit as much as they do off the misfortune and shortcomings of bad games? There is a spectacular tendency to play up the failures and drill games for the perception of failure purely…

Since the other Marvel playsets were in 2.0 (which is not being updated), that’s a no.

You’ll need the starter pack, as it contains the game.

You can technically get by with the starter pack and the figures that come with it and the playsets. For instance, the Marvel Battlegrounds playset comes with the new Captain America figure, and you can get by with that alone. It can be more fun with more figures, particularly if you decide to monkey around in the toy…

Working in a game company is much like watching the sausage get made. The good part is that different genres of games are quite a bit different from one another. I can play Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and have fun because it’s so different. On the other hand, I’ve rarely played any of the game I’ve most recently worked…

Anything in particular you’re looking to know?

Encoding any sort of video with the compression needed to substantially cut down the HD video required in this sort of thing would bottleneck at the processors, no matter how hardcore they are.

It’s the uncompressing the HD video that’s the difficult part.

In many cases, I’d agree, but you don’t buy out a company of Ubisoft’s sheer size for just a single IP (or even their entire IP library), you do it to get a profitable subsidiary. While it’s true that there are tons of people willing to work in the industry, it is crucial to have a core development team at all times.…