Video Game Industry In Full Meltdown Mode! (Capcom, Activision)

Occasionally, I skim over GameFAQs Nonstop Gaming Board to see what people are talking about.  One thing that's going on is that there's an increasing animosity towards Capcom.  Now I haven't been paying any attention to them (no racing games certainly doesn't help) recently other than Keiji Inafune's recent departure and shellacking of the Japanese game industry and the occasional Dead Rising news.  I would venture a guess that Capcom is Japan's second-biggest game publisher behind Nintendo because they have so many hits (Street Fighter, Megaman, Resident Evil, etc.) and don't even mention Square since they suck now.

What has Capcom done lately, you ask?  Bam, read this:

To rehash: No Megaman in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.  MvC3 is basically a demo of Ultimate MvC3.  Dead Rising 2 is basically a demo of DR2: Off the Record.  Canceled Megaman Legends 3 and Megaman Universe.  Can't erase save files from Resident Evil 5/Mercenaries 3D.  Devil May Cry is trash now.  Too many Street Fighter games.  And I could go on but DAMN it is bad.

IT'S HIS FAULT!!!  HE PUT A CURSE ON CAPCOM!!!  YOU SINISTER BASTARD!!!

Heh, and I thought Sega had problems.  Well, no, Sega's doing okay as far as I'm concerned.  I guess Inafune was right--Japanese companies have their heads up their asses right now.  OH WAIT, NOT NINTENDO, THEY ARE GODS AMONG MEN, THEY CAN DO NO WRONG.  Well the Wii U and 3DS are questionable at this stage so there you go.

EDIT a few days later: I also heard that Capcom has revealed Hello Kitty x Street Fighter merchandise at some point in the future.  So basically, Capcom is hiring 4chan users now?  Dammit man, stick a fork in Capcom, they've drank the Kool-aid...

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BUT WAIT.  It doesn't end there.  America, you're not off the hook yet.  Oh, we can't forget about our good friend Bobby Kotick over there at Activision.  He has plans to reboot the Guitar Hero franchise.  As you can tell, it's gonna suck big time.  Here's what he had to say:

...But we created this critically acclaimed, highly rated game –and these are the hardest failures, when you put your heart and soul into it and you deliver an extraordinarily well received game, and nobody shows up to buy it. So that’s what happened with DJ Hero. At the same time we were so excited about going down this new direction with DJ Hero, I think we abandoned a bit of the innovation that was required in the Guitar Hero franchise.

And so it was the double whammy of DJ Hero was unsuccessful, and then Guitar Hero became unsuccessful because it didn’t have any nourishment and care. So we made what I think was exactly the right decision last year. We said you know what, we need to regain our audience interest, and we really need to deliver inspired innovation. So we’re going to take the products out of the market, and we’re not going to tell anybody what we’re doing for awhile, but we’re going to stop selling Guitar Hero altogether. And then we’re going to go back to the studios and we’re going to use new studios and reinvent Guitar Hero. And so that’s what we’re doing with it now.

Oh Good Lord.  What he's trying to say is that they pooled all their effort into DJ Hero at the expense of Guitar Hero.  And DJ Hero didn't sell (and to a certain extent, neither did the latest GH) so Activision just wasted their time on nothing.  And now the new Guitar Hero will inexplicably rip off aspects of Rock Band and I don't know what to say anymore.  Oh, and DJ Hero?  That's gone forever, kiss it goodbye.

Got this from some Kotaku photoshop contest long ago...you find it yourself.

As an aside, if Activision REALLY wants to "save" Guitar Hero, follow the name--JUST INCLUDE GUITARS, that's it.  Drums and vocals just didn't work out for GH--you'll NEVER outclass Rock Band at this rate, they got you beat there.  Pick songs that include the best guitar charts so that people don't have to sit through songs that are lousy in guitar but good on other instruments.  Really, people just want to go back to the old GH style (GH3 grossed over a BILLION dollars in sales), but you know they ain't doing that.

EDIT: And Activision will find a way to nickel-and-dime you with Call of Duty.  Complaining about the $15/1200 MSP map packs?  Pssh, I admit that's steep for some but we play enough Call of Duty get our money's worth.  But they're gonna whore out CoD to the end...just like Tony Hawk and Guitar Hero.  You heard about this "Elite" service for paying members?  MW3 has train-wreck written all over it.  Then maybe WoW and Starcraft too...

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And ultimately, this ends with a GameFAQs poll taken today.  EDIT: These are the final results of the poll out of 56,256 votes.  "Which video game publisher do you like the least (or hate the most) right now?"  Rounded percentages: 

Activision Blizzard 23%
Capcom 22%
Electronic Arts 18%
Microsoft 9%
Square Enix 9% 
Nintendo 8%
Sony 6%
Ubisoft 4%

Actually, at one point in this poll, Capcom had 26% & Activision had 22% but you can see that this is not the case anymore.  Wow, Microsoft in 4th place--who would've thunk it?  Thankfully, there's no Sega here because they're pathetic enough as it is.  The antipathy towards Capcom may wear out after a while--I can't see them outclassing Activision in the long run...

I really can't talk about this anymore.  If you want to know more "bad" things the industry has done, read what I posted before.  I've never seen the industry and its fans on edge before.  Everyone's at each others' throats, crappy business practices, tons of shouting at the devs to do this and do that, making all sorts of demands, it just never ends.  Maybe I ought to just step back and let the chips fall as they may since I don't want to join the angry mobs and get blasted with the hoses & tear gas, so to speak.

Random Google image search to the rescue!