Surprise Surprise

i liek to make n i dun care abut fans

I HEARD PHIL FISH FARTED!

I dislike nearly everybody who has commented here.

I suppose it is the TIGS frontpage, though.

But what does the TV say on the other back?

My only complaint is that horrible yellow for the background of that picture.

Have you all played every good game in the NES library? If not, get to it! Emulation is your friend.

Once that’s over, play all the good NES rom hacks. By that time, you should’ve made up for not having Fez by playing several things that aren’t available on XBLA or any current console. For free.

It’s true that the XBLA platform will probably garner them more sales (due to pirating, audience, etc etc) than PC; ultimately for Polytron, it’s probably a better platform, individually, than PC.

On the other hand, the game originally did seem to be heading for PC, to at least some extent. And there are some fairly secure PC channels, particularly if your game has online elements. I mean, if they are on XBLA, it’s not like they would have trouble getting onto Steam.

But yeah, I’m sure it’s a good game, I’m sure people will enjoy it, and I’m sure they should make a fair bit for their next one off it. Polytron probably deserves it considering how long it has been in development. But, for a PC gamer, seeing an ad saying that it will be out in 2010… on XBLA… is a bit meh.

But hey, it’s not necessarily a site for thems PC gamers. My prior comment may have sounded a tad harsh; at least it is good to see indie games (poised to be) doing well on the market.

It is kinda the logical platform nowadays. But still, some kind of PC release date would be nice.

“Oh yeah you PC guys over there, hmm, y hello thar, I herd u liekd piratin so I pit a gam on ur consoll so u can plah while you plah”

:D

This reminds me of Outcast. And by the time Outcast came out, its voxel engine already looked outdated and everyone realized the game wasn’t really good.

for those not in the know, the majority of fan frustration stems from the following factors.

there are a lot of people who have been waiting to hear news about the game since the igf. the mainstream gaming press has been all over it, lapping up every screenshot or blog leak that’s been released.

recently, claiming a lack of funds for developing the game, fish asked for fan support by selling merch.

most other indie devs have the courtesy to be open and honest about their development process and present fans with even small amounts of feedback especially when asking for financial support be it through preorders or whatever. the comments in various forums as well as polytron’s website and trailer videos have been literally filled with people asking for info regarding the target platform, a reasonable question. phil and renaud have selectively answered people with certain questions about the game while ignoring the vast majority of fans and supporters. the best we get are these viral-esque image dumps with a single line of text and a headline?

stating that they’re using the xna framework was NOT equivalent to announcing that the 360 was the target platform, any more than a little green ‘a’ button indicator in a screenshot. microsoft themselves market the controller as the ‘360 controller for windows’, and tons of games support it.

the icing on the cake, besides refusing to address fans and supporters in a straightforward way as mentioned, is the total PIG vibe this exudes. brandon leads the post with the patronizing title ‘Surprise Surprise’, suggesting as others have, that people “in the know” have really been aware of this all along, meanwhile the fans and supporters are expected to lap up this throwaway attempt at drumming up hype and content-free posing instead of simple honesty.

what’s the story tigsource? not everyone is ‘hip to the scene’, you’ve just typed out what’s already on the damn image, with a hyperlink to the ‘company page’. this is even worse than the garbage that passes for what the mainstream gaming press tries to pass off as news. it’s a far cry from the usual indie humility we see around here.

it’s fine if YOU don’t care about Fez, or a PC release, but the point is that some people DO, and have given their time and money in anticipation only to be thoroughly screwed over now that they don’t know if they’ll even have the opportunity to play it.

Official Polytron News:
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=7036.60

also, entrope, you’re a whiny git with a sense of entitlement. neither of these properties becomes you well.

**@entrope:** Dude, shut up. You’re acting like a spoiled brat.

The post is titled “Surprise Surprise” ’cause XBLA has *long* been rumored and assumed to be the target platform. Everywhere.

And nobody’s misled anyone. Not breaking a contract with Microsoft is hardly an “excuse.” Get a grip.

ALSO, if you want better posts, fucking pay me. You’re not entitled to *anything*, you know that, right? I’m amazed how someone can still manage to piss their pants over what may be the most innocuous post I’ve ever made.

Jeez.

also, entrope, keep in mind that tigsource is not a news site, it’s a hobbyist site — there’s bit of a difference

anyway, as someone said above, there are a lot of other games to play; don’t get caught up in so much hype for one game. i want a pc version too, and will also be disappointed it if doesn’t have one, but it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t and it won’t affect me very much; i’ll just play something else instead. there are more great indie games than anyone can keep up with.

I can be vulgar when I want, thanks.

Your comments don’t need to be deleted, but they are whiny and selfish.

Off topic, but can somebody explain why there’s no XBLA for PC? As somebody who doesn’t own a 360, my impression was that XBLA is a quasi online service like steam, so there’s no real ability to pirate anyway, no? And there’s enough cross compatibility with the framework to make cross ports easy, no? And if I’m not mistaken, doesn’t microsoft sell the platform at a loss, so wouldn’t they be happy(ish) if people bought the games without buying the console?

the reason is probably that pcs differ so starkly from one another that pc games never work on all pc’s, there are always video card problems, driver problems, and so on. consoles eliminate that problem. making a game for the pc is very hard because there is no “pc”, there are a billion unique pc’s, and no promise that if it works on one it’ll work on any other.

so making xbla for the pc would take a lot of time and resources and would also have to compete with services like steam, and steam has already kind of cornered the market for non-casual pc game direct downloads; they’d be fighting a losing battle

True.

But hey, if they make a PC release several months in advance (like Braid), it wouldn’t be such a bad move to make, wouldn’t it?

Once again, the PC gets the shaft, even though it’s PC gamers who are chiefly responsible for word-of-mouth promotion for all sort of non-mainstream games; but hey, I guess actively participating in the community and expecting a little consideration as consumers in return make them all pirates/entitled brats/whiny/etc.

Good going guys.

They don’t give a shit about us (PC gamers), so why should we be happy?

I would have bought this game, now I’ll just pirate it on my modded 360. Good job at stopping piracy by the way.

Also awesome job with getting people to buy shirts for something they’ll never get to play, that’s hilairious. Epic trolling right there, I must say that I am impressed.

Gotta love the TIGS frontpage. :(

There’s more to it than that. Fixed platform developing for one.

You want it to run and sell well on windows? Deal with all the different configurations folks have and cope with whether people have stuff like .NET installed etc…

You want it to run on someones 360? Hey, it just -does-, throw in stuff like the integrated achievements/scoreboard stuff (for XBLA, obv) and it’s not difficult to see which is the more attractive proposition to dev for primarily.

It’s so much nicer knowing that your game just works and there’s no messing around.

I’ve long thought the whole “PC games never work consistently” line of thought, while certainly based on a real problem, is grossly overplayed.

You don’t need to look at high-level stuff like XNA to find working PC games. A native executable using a myriad of separate libraries works fine over 95% of the time, at least for me.

Obviously that’s from the gamer’s perspective; I can see how inconsistency would be more stressful for a dev. Buuut if we *are* talking about XNA, then it’s not a likely reason they went to the 360. Would the Polytron guys find it a pain in the ass to package a .NET redist installer? I doubt it. Integrated achievements/scoreboard? Sure, but how many PC gamers require that stuff?

They merely went for a different audience in order to make more money. In time they’ll release it on PC, to make more money. If there’s any exclusivity deal in place, it has a time limit, because MS likes when software comes out for Windows OSes, because it indirectly makes them more money.

This comment has been left intentionally short.