great news if true. There was always loads of mileage left in both WC and the Lancers series, and a solid fanbase for both. That X2 and 3 have been commercially successful shows that there's still a demand for space-sims no matter what the games media say about the genre being dead, and the active modding community itself is a clear indication that there's lots of life in space-sims yet. Sadly however they aren't like fps and action games where existing engines can have whatever movie theme shoved on the top and then sold as a movie tie-in, and publishing execs seem to have a blind spot where space-sims are concerned!

for example, the Star Wars franchise has shifted from space-based gamnes to 1st and 3rd person action. Watching the sprog play SW Battlefront 2 on his Xbox made me long for Tie-Fighter v X-Wing on PC. So what if you can be General Grievous with 4 lightsabers or whatever? Flying a Tie Advanced was a real challenge and one of the hardest games I've ever played (unless you played on baby-girl level) I had high hopes for Rogue Leader but it was too arcadey and not sim enough for my tastes. The sproglet loved it though.

although there is some vehicle combat in battlefront 2 its not even close to the same the TIE defender was the best ....period. If this indeed comes to pass I may have to break the 12 step online gaming program I Mudded entirely too much

best wipe your boots off then.

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Sadly however they aren't like fps and action games where existing engines can have whatever movie theme shoved on the top and then sold as a movie tie-in, and publishing execs seem to have a blind spot where space-sims are concerned!

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hallelujah and amen Taw

The above article does sound promising, guess we will just have to wait and see eh?

Hunting those above the law.

Protector and cofounder of the Hawk Trading Company found on Hals2003Evoserver.

Bah, any game that *is* produced (if any) will probably be another MMO-type of game with no single player campaign. That's where they make money these days; through exorbitant server account fees *sigh*.

Edited by - esquilax on 3/10/2006 4:32:01 PM

Can't disagree with you but there also is the chance that, to distinguish itself, they may want to start with an SP establish the rationale for the MMO universe. I might only be a cr*ppy SP but it could be a good one.

Now now Esq, it's not just about making money...okay yes it is. But the point is that unless they run for about five years, MMOs don't generally turn in the profits like other games. It's true that the game makes more money than those of other genres, but I'd bet that most of that money goes to maintaining servers, accounts, adding new servers, adding bandwith and all sorts of other crap. It's true that almost all MMOs have no single player campagin (sp?), but I serously doubt that they're making a killing off of server fees. Like I said, most of the money goes into keeping the game running. Take World of Warcraft for example. I'm pretty sure most of their income (for the WoW branch of Blizzard at least) goes into keeping the game running smoothly. (And with World of Warcraft, it shows. It was one of the only MMOs I've ever seen to win dozens of Game of the Year awards.)

I however, am hopeful about this new game. I've played Anarchy Online (they started a free promo offer where you can download the client and play for free from their website) and although it was the first scifi based MMO I played, it just kind of gets boring after about immediatly. I have high hopes, but when you try to do something new or different (or even something that's been attempted before but unsuccesfull) you take a huge risk. Nintendo took a huge risk with the DS, but it was one I'm glad they took, because as far as I know, the DS is still outselling the PSP, and more people that have the DS are happy with it than PSP owners. If this crashes and burns, it'll just be another "oh well" in the gaming history, and if it is a huge suprise and freakin' rocks, then it'll be a "HOLY S#&%!"

I have high hopes for this, but I'd better not get too attached just in case it dies faster than Blind Justice.



w00t! All your oil are belong to U.S.