THQ CEO interview by Takahashi

[Rangers]

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/20...nd_making_big_bets_on_big_original_games.html

A interesting look at the industry. I also think it interesting I just listened to the Pachter podcast, where basically he says third parties should be positioned where they dont care who wins the hardware race, then I look at this article and THQ CEO echoes that exactly.

Q: I guess everybody previously said that by 2007 Christmas time, we will figure out who is the winner.
A: It’s going to be a longer race than that. It’s funny. The financial community is always asking us to pick the winner. The game press and the mainstream press. At the end of the day, we really don’t care that much. It doesn’t matter where the platforms go. That’s where we’re going to allocate our resources. We don’t honestly spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Some snippet for you:

Q: Are the Wii titles coming out at half the cost?
A: Yes, and sometimes even less than that. Where costs are occurring in this generation are in asset and content creation. And since the Wii is not high-definition, and it can still look good. You have to remember a lot of game systems aren’t yet hooked up to high-def TVs. Content creation is costing all the money. With the Wii, you can look great at a third of the cost sometimes. The business model on the Wii works.

 

[Todd33]

the Wii is not high-definition, and it can still look good. ...With the Wii, you can look great at a third of the cost

Cheap maybe, but looks great? I guess if you lower the bar below the original Xbox.

 

[expletive]

Cheap maybe, but looks great? I guess if you lower the bar below the original Xbox.

"Great", in this context, is a relative term. Lets see if theyre still saying "great" in 12-18 months from now when everything on 360 and PS3 really does look great.

 

[Skrying]

I can't believe we lived before in those dark dark ages! OMG how did we survive with sub HD resolutions? What were we thinking? Why did we even try? I can't take it anymore!!!

 

[Bohdy]

"Great", in this context, is a relative term. Lets see if theyre still saying "great" in 12-18 months from now when everything on 360 and PS3 really does look great.

You're right, "great" is a relative term. In this case I think THQ define it as "not objectionable to most consumers", which is, and will continue to be the case. THQ wins.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You're right, "great" is a relative term.

Relative it may be, but you can just redefine it! Saying "not objectionable to most consumers" does not fit the definition of great. Great is superior. Thus the relative comparison would have to be something like "you can still look great (compared to the average of games taken across the entirety of history, from last gen back to Pong)" to be valid and grammatically correct.

But we all know it's just a PR thing. No-one working on Wii is going to come out and say they're disappointed with the graphics and think it looks pretty poor by current standards. And comments won't worry about inaccurate. They'll use terms like 'great' to mean 'acceptible' or 'artisticly good'.