Miyamoto bitch slaps SEGA

[Wooduck51]

As I perused the gaming news sites this morning I ran across a tiny little interview with Shiggy Miyamoto, and after one or two stupid questions the following was put forth:

Wired: Nintendo is huge now. How do you maintain quality control?

Miyamoto: I'm always instructing my game designers on the history of the characters and worlds we've created. Often we're in development and I'll say, "Oh, this looks like a Sega game. We need to make it look more like Mario."

This seems to succinctly illustrate (one of) the problem(s) with SEGA; Whilst they try to innovate out the arse, they lose sight of anything that worked well in previous installments.

Somewhat pointles little topic but interesting none the less.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/maga ... 15miyamoto

[G.Silver]

I'm kinda thinking that's more to do with stylistic choices than anything particularly bad about Sega games, if you can remember 1993 there was something pretty distinctive about the games on the Genesis that you didn't really get on the SNES and it wasn't just low color count. Whatever that distinctive thing was, Sega doesn't bother with it now, while Nintendo's hanging on to theirs. IF you're calling them out on it (I don't think Miyamoto is, although he fucking should, it would make my day).

[Green Gibbon!]

I'm pretty sure there's no one left at Sega who would care enough to listen.

[Xyton]

Honestly, knowing Miyamoto, I think he just meant it felt like a game by another company, not a game by Nintendo. I doubt he was trying to insult Sega.

[Ngangbius]

^Someone should tell the butthurt fanchildren this.

[Dasher]

The thing is respecting the creator's vision, Miyamoto is there so everything is ok now, but once he leaves someone will quickly destroy Mario, ect... unless he has good apprentices.

It happened with Naoto Oshima, after he left.. Sonic went down hill.

SEGA's history is and always has been a mess, so yeah.

[j-man]

I played Sonic 3K the other night and it was fucking epic. Screw Ohshima, get Yasuhara back.

[One Classy Bloke]

I could name someone specific within Sega Europe's QA who is part of the problem with the quality (outside of the release date obsessed higher ups and lazy developers), but I do hope to work there again someday~. But they seemed to be less interested about the quality of the game, and more meeting deadlines. This is the person who lead the QA on most recent Sonic games and many of the Mega Drive VC releases. Loved giving us mundane, redundant check sheets which were more of a hindrance if anything.

I can't speak for the other QA departments, but I agree with Miyamoto's comment in the assumed context (despite shedding a tear). Sega's QA is shit, because of poor planning and profit obsessed higher ups.

[FlashTHD]

Man, if it is seriously that bad, then don't you have better choices of publishers to test for over there (that still pay decent)?

[One Classy Bloke]

EA isn't hiring.

[BlazeHedgehog]

I'm kinda thinking that's more to do with stylistic choices than anything particularly bad about Sega games, if you can remember 1993 there was something pretty distinctive about the games on the Genesis that you didn't really get on the SNES and it wasn't just low color count. Whatever that distinctive thing was, Sega doesn't bother with it now, while Nintendo's hanging on to theirs. IF you're calling them out on it (I don't think Miyamoto is, although he fucking should, it would make my day).

But, uh, they specifically ask about Quality Control. Not visual style or anything of that sort, but quality control. In other words, how much polish and bug testing a game receives. Of which Sega games seem to receive very little of - especially Sonic games.

I mean, when you think about it, in an era where there were not many "unlockables" in videogames, Sonic 3 & Knuckles gave us Super Sonic, Super Knuckles, Hyper Sonic, Hyper Knuckles, and Hyper Tails, for a total of 8 "different" endings. That was a game packed to the gills with secret and bonus content.

Nowadays, where games routinely parade out massively long lists of superfluous unlockables like bighead mode, all you get in a Sonic game is a cutscene viewer and a music player, basically. I suppose if you wanted to consider it "unlocking" to play as the rest of the cast you could, but those aren't really bonuses - that's more "the natural order of the gameplay disguised as a bonus".

And looking over the big list of stuff cut from Sonic 2k6, one gets the impression somebody on Sonicteam wants to put in all this bonus extra stuff, but the time they are given for Quality Assurance is so damn low that even the non-bonus content isn't even properly finished.

Nintendo, on the other hand, is a company that is known for keeping a game in development if they are not happy with it (though there was a period on the Gamecube where they tried to pump games out faster rather than delay them for years and years - but that lead to turds like Mario Sunshine, so they've presumably stopped doing that).

Hell, Shigeru Miyamoto is attributed to the phrase "A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever."

Translation: "Sega needs to stop rushing things out the door."

[G.Silver]

Regardless of what they asked him, in the quote he talks specifically about things like character and world history, not bugs or rushing to market.

Also, extras have nothing to do with polish. The most shitty, bug-filled game in the world could still be full of hidden characters, developer commentary, and other DVD features.

[BlazeHedgehog]

Regardless of what they asked him, in the quote he talks specifically about things like character and world history, not bugs or rushing to market.

Also, extras have nothing to do with polish. The most shitty, bug-filled game in the world could still be full of hidden characters, developer commentary, and other DVD features.

Well, it would depend on when you planned and implemented extras. Considering they are extras, it would make sense to assume you implement that stuff last, after the game itself was completed. Sure, there are cases where unfinished games still get bonus features (for example, Halo 2 had that special edition DVD where you basically watched everybody on the development team repeat "We're not going to have enough time." for an hour), but the majority of special bonuses like that are added in later, after all the critical stuff is completed. Extras are extras, and defined by being "not critical".

Also, whoever in here copied my Platformers.net post on to the Something Awful Sonic 2k6 LP thread, you could have at least kept the images, or at the very least, the youtube links.