haha, I just watched the trailer and I think it looks like the best thing I've seen since the Matthew Broderick Inspector Gadget movie. Someone on 4chan also compared it to the Woody Woodpecker movie, so maybe even Nikumubeki will like it.

Amazing how even today Sega is trying to catch up to Nintendo.

his ****in weird little formless blue body, what the ****

But if his body is human proportioned, it makes the mocap cheaper

so... would it be accurate to say that the movie is one giant advertisement for the plush dolls they're clearly trying to sell, with the CGI rendering of sonic accordingly stylized to look exactly like such dolls?

It's almost like some exec did a business calculation and put a price tag on Jim Carey vs. the amount of dolls they could sell according to how many parents he'd bring into the theater whose kids are now of doll-consuming age.

I don't know a thing about Sonic, but while the character looks horrendous, the movie seems like it would be fun to watch once on a lonely evening when you have literally nothing else to watch.

But really, the character looks like a skinny furry costume based on some alien creature. how on earth is that a hedgehog. why the actual **** did they decide to make spikes out of spikes. that's like giving anime characters anime hair in live action adaptations.

It's actually really sad when you think about it, because Sonic's whole thing is that he's supposed to be really really fast.

I cri ery tiem :-(

Not gonna lie, I watched that Sonic trailer again and I now I really want to see this movie.

He was faster with BLAST PROCESSING. Didn't you see the commercial where they represent the Sega with a dragster and the SNES with a dumpy old van?

Sega does what NintenDON'T.

The Sega attack ads were good.

http://www.sega-16.com/2006/08/marketing-the-genesis-segas-advertising-1989-1996/

A beautiful story of rhetoric for those interested in business strategy. You can learn quite a bit from this.

Would this explain his human teeth?

To complete the 90's throwback, Sonic will now be played by Gary Busey in spandex.

I dunno. Maybe? I assume they must be doing some kind of tongue mocap these days.

Apparently a few months back Bethesda pushed an update for Fallout 76 which was based on an older version of the client (??) and reintroduced a ton of bugs, including exploits.

I cannot really fathom how disastrous this game was for them. Or why this project was greenlighted and run the way it was. Seriously, what the hell is going on over there?

Simple, it's a franchise they can thought they could print money with without too much effort, and there's enough people that do blindly give them money that it works. Seems like every publisher is like that these days.

So, this seems to be the speculative story as far as I can tell.

Fallout 4 multiplayer was an idea they had in pre-production. I can't tell when it was cut, but there could have been some work left from Fallout 4 when Fallout 76 was started.

Bethesda has no experience with online anything, the Creation Engine was not developed for multiplayer, the primary studio in charge of developing 76 was Austin. It seems they were basically handed the source code for the Creation Engine and told "make it work in multiplayer", as Bethesda Maryland is focusing on future projects.

Bethesda Austin, previously BattleCry Studios, had only developed a single game as far as I can tell before which was scrapped and layoffs occurred. Their next project was updating the Creation Engine. Why such an obviously inexperienced and untested team was handed the keys to such a massive project, we can't say. But they were primarily responsible for every part of 76 which sucks: the netcode and content.

Near the end of the development cycle they added Bethesda Dallas to the project. Formerly Escalation Studios, they were a mobile-only company up until their participation in the FO76 project.

So, uhh, basically nobody working on the game had any idea what they were doing. It seems they hacked together ****ty netcode onto Bethesda's solid engine and released some asset flip crap that everybody hates. Given the massive amount of graphical and other glitches, their game devs probably had little contact with Bethesda Maryland.

IDK what ZeniMax is up to, but if destroying their subsidiary's brand image is what they're trying to do, they're succeeding. Moral of the story: don't hand inexperienced people big projects, and be willing to scrap **** that is obviously going to be a flop.

Also I have no idea who was in charge of other things like the shop, where they posted e.g. an item at "full price" $24, but it never existed at that actual price and was always "half-priced" to $12. Pretending an item's original sale price is higher than the current sale price, when that was never the case, is illegal in many countries. Bethesda quickly changed it once people complained.

This is small, but it goes to show the general level of incompetence at whoever in these companies is managing the project. Someone's in over their head, and they probably live in Texas.

So they are reworking the Sonic model or some ****, but I can't seem to justify why they would even spend the money and effort changing it. I mean the best they can do with this dying/dead IP is to just release the film and be done with it, right? Unless the producers are planning a Sonic Cinematic Universe for people who still view the 90's through rose-tinted glasses (people like me I guess...)

Suggestion I've frequently heard is that they actually did the movie with a more faithful model, but they made a ghoulish version for early leaks and the trailer so they could respond to "fan feedback". Then the movie comes out with the real model and nobody complains that Jim Carrey didn't put on 300 lbs.

Almost feigning great incompetence to later better sell the product? Can't think of a precedent example.

It's called anchoring. Don't think of it like marketing ingenuity, think of it as a negotiation between Paramount and the public over how much incompetence they'll tolerate.

amazing

Weird nightmare based on wonky game physics last night: my favorite drummer was hanging out around a ledge, and wandered a little over the edge. Because the person who had made my dream in JED was sloppy, the surface over the ledge was translucent but also erroneously flagged as walkable, but only for a little ways out, so the throng of people who hanging out near the ledge were suspended in air.

Unfortunately, my man Gil got a little too comfortable with this, and soon enough plunged to his death. :/ I think I jumped after him, but didn't die. (I just realized: is lucid dreaming just running with cheat codes?)

So I finished the main story campaign. I actually didn't think it was bad overall. I enjoyed it. Was stuck for awhile battling Hask and his TIE Interceptor until I decided to just keep on him. Game was pretty easy considering it was on the hardest difficulty and usually very pretty to look at. I started the DLC campaign. Don't know if I'll get into the multiplayer or not.

Oh, still have to point out that I hate the load times. One thing that was cool, and I hoped they'd do, is they have wounded Chewie as the spotlighted character when you open the game right now. I thought that was a nice touch.

Relevant to the Sonic discussion:

Been playing a game called Baba is You which I found weirdly engrossing. So a recommendation.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/

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Man, I had no idea six years ago that the greatest moment of FGR was also the last moment of FGR.

OH THE TRAGEDY

I survived the zenith of Nikumuediting

Uh... games.


So how bout them Gamestops, eh? Or as I sometimes prefer to call it, Blockbuster 2. Three days ago the interim CEO/CFO/COO abruptly resigned after the board rejected a compensation overhaul for store managers (who previously got a steep pay cut a few years ago). This added him to a long list of high-profile departures in recent years, most notably a CEO last year who only lasted three months. Apparently it doesn't matter how inbred the rats are, they can still figure out when the ship is sinking.

You might be asking, why did I call Gamestop "Blockbuster 2"? That's a delightful question. Thank you for asking.

Blockbuster was a widely misunderstood failure. The popular narrative is that Blockbuster was outcompeted by Netflix (usually accompanied by that delightful story about how Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix because they didn't understand streaming, and, as apparently required by law, always neglecting to mention that Netflix was a damn mail order business at the time). This isn't what really happened. The truth is actually much more interesting: Blockbuster was outcompeted by Walmart.

Blockbuster never made money from rentals. They bought rental copies from the movie studios at cost ($3-4 each) and, in exchange, Blockbuster paid the rental revenue back to the movie studios. Blockbuster made money from two places: late fees and retail. Late fees were in year over year decline; management had a pretty good idea that the future of the company had to be retail. And the best retail for them? Previously rented movies. Their cost was $3 a copy, they sold them at damn near full retail prices, and they didn't have to pay the movie studios any of it. It was almost pure profit.

Remember that "End of Late Fees" thing? That was never about late fees. That was actually about growing PRP sales. Instead of charging late fees if you kept a movie late, the company billed it to you as a sale of previously-rented product. The company figured a certain percentage of people would just go with it. Pretty damn scammy, and Blockbuster ended up losing a lawsuit over it. But that shows their priorities at least.

So where'd this all go wrong? Walmart started selling movies as a loss leader. "Loss leader" is a high-falutin' retail management term for "anticompetitive business practices". Basically, Walmart sold movies below cost in order to drive sales of other products (this was partly fueled by movie studios offering Walmart reduced DVD wholesale rates). Blockbuster's management had been betting the company on moving previously rented movies for $17.99... but, meanwhile, Walmart was selling the same movies brand new for $14.99. Compounding the error, Blockbuster's management allocated ever more floor space for used product, and more and more wall space for these discounted Hollywood releases (and ever less for smaller titles that weren't subsidized). Desperately chasing this scheme that would never work. They gradually undermined the very reason people were going to Blockbuster to be exposed to PRP in the first place.

All of this happened way before Netflix streaming was a thing. Blockbuster probably would have gone out of business eventually, but the company was walking dead for a decade by the time Netflix mattered. The idea that streaming killed Blockbuster is pure fiction. And it's historical revisionism by analysts desperate to hype up a Silicon Valley unicorn that's frankly a kinda boring idea now.

Okay, that's a lot of words about not-games, but I'm getting to the point. I call Gamestop "Blockbuster 2" because it's another situation where the public/media perception of the company's pending collapse is completely wrong. People are saying Gamestop is failing because of digital distribution. It ain't. Gamestop has been failing for more than a decade and it's failing for the same reason Blockbuster did. Back in the '00s they bet the company on deceptive schemes to source a cheap supply of used product and resell it at basically full price, let it crowd out the new release variety that gave people a reason to come in, and now they're reaping what they sowed. Plus both companies had abusive, incompetent management. Plus both companies paid far less than even Walmart. So everybody who ever worked at either company hated it, and when you shopped there it really showed. Plus nobody in management at either company had any subject matter knowledge. (Bonus: go look at photos of Gamestop's recent CEOs. I'm not saying octogenarian chain restaurant executives aren't allowed to enjoy video games, but let's be honest here, they probably don't care about them much more than Gamestop's board of directors does.)

And that's why they're Blockbuster 2.

Good riddance.

Extra bonus: why does video game digital distribution (the thing that's "killing" Gamestop) even exist? To a large extent it happened because Gamestop ****ed themselves up.

PC was Gamestop's weakest performer prior to Steam, so they made the deepest cuts to PC inventories to make room for more used product. At the time this was pretty catastrophic for PC devs - from a finance perspective, your publisher took a cut, your distributor took a cut, Gamestop took a cut - two, actually, if you were paying them for prominent placement (yes, Gamestop extorts money from developers in exchange for not burying their games on a bottom shelf). So there were really two issues here, the above the line financial cost of dealing with Gamestop (the 30% Steam cut is practically nothing in comparison). But there's also the bottom line cost of dealing with Gamestop: the fact that, well, after shrinking their PC section to make room for used product, they only had one end cap left to sell. So you probably weren't getting it. Your game was probably getting book ended on the bottom shelf along with everybody who's not named EA.

And I don't think we'll ever know for sure, but if I had to guess I'd say that last issue was probably the more important one.

The only thing stopping the consoles from moving over too is ****ty internet in the flyover states.

Gamestop sucks. I don't know how they are still in business; around here, they're practically always empty. The only time people are there is when a new console is released.

I stopped shopping there when I went in to buy a new game and they took the box off the shelf and then pulled the actual game out of a drawer, put it in the case, and handed it to me. They were opening every single game and taking the discs out and storing them separately. This makes returning a product (for example, if one were buying it as a gift) impossible because they refuse to accept "opened" boxes. It also meant my "new" game had slimy cheeto fingerprints all over it and that's icky (ok I made that part up but it's been in my head since that guy touched my disc!).

My son preordered some game there because he liked the preorder bonus they were having vs amazon or best buy or whatever.

It's a shame, I used to love browsing the shelves of gamestop, electronics boutique, eb games, etc. Most times there were others in there browsing as well and we could discuss the games.

Oh no, returning a “new” gutted game is fine. They put a sticker around the front of the case to seal it shut. The sticker never comes off but that’s kind of like a security feature, I guess? anyway it’s not GameStop’s problem.

I once worked at GameStop. This was never tolerated in my store, but common practice in the company was CSRs taking gutted new copies home to try them out. Gotta be honest though, that beats the hell out of the common practice at Blockbuster, which at least in my district was the married district manager knocking up CSRs on the clock.

Anyhoo. GameStop is still in business because it takes friggin’ forevvvvvvver for a big company to go out of business. Blockbuster took so long to go out of business after they killed themselves that people forgot why it happened (Hollywood studios giving Walmart a wholesale discount in retaliation for blockbuster refusing to renegotiate Paramount ownership era contracts). GameStop is well and truly doomed. It’s only a matter of time. And I doubt anybody’s really gonna miss them.

Just in case anybody thinks I’m being melodramatic, GameStop has shed 60% off its market cap in the last 52w with no sign of stopping. That’s not a minor price correction. That’s rapidly dropping into PE leveraged buyout territory, at which point the company is literally over, because if anybody understands gamers less than GameStops directors and managers it’s a soul sucking PE doof.

Sounds about right. I remember in 2k10 or so wanting to sell some games, and the amount offered made me laugh and walk out. Then you see the prices for used games and the scam is apparent.

I don't know anyone who would set foot in one except to buy games at release night.

Definitely don't. I'm surprised whenever I see GameStops still open. I don't know what an average day looks like but they're usually empty or have one customer.

Speaking of something-busters 2, how about the remastered rerelease of the Ghostbusters video game from about ten years ago?

There was a Ghostbusters video game 10 years ago? There's a Ghostbusters video game today?

Yeah, the original cast did the voices for the characters. It was envisioned as a stand-in for Ghostbusters III. The cast was two old to make it as a movie.

Jon`C, I think when you tell these tales there's always something that feels a bit wrong. Don't misunderstand me, I think you tell them well and are telling the correct story but something feels off to me because of perception. I appreciate the fact that you've now explained something I've wondered about, cheap Wal-Mart DVDs. That is a thing from the past I miss but I remember stopping going to video rental stores because it was always inconvenient and Netflix's physical disc delivery scheme was the complete opposite. Similar with Gamestop, I'm usually a bargain game shopper so I pretty much always wait until I can pick up a game for $20 or less rather than full price. Along with digital distribution there has been this horrible practice of bundling so-called Game of the Year titles with DLC codes that render it pointless to purchase those games used. So, I'm not arguing that I think you're wrong. I don't it's just that the perception I imagine many have is that the narrative reasons make sense because that's why we stopped frequenting those establishments.