Sheesh, spare a guy from his already standing perm warning after six different bans by six different people, tell him to send in PM reports about the other guy he's been complaining about if he has a problem instead of derailing the thread (and said person has been banned three times via PM report in the last year), and instead of taking your advice, he comes back and melts down in the thread.
Since Bishop brought up the topic as his parting act, I guess I'll be a bit blunt. We tried a warning and engagement strategy for quite a while, and while it would work for a week or two, it clearly wasn't working overall, so we went to a ban heavy strategy like normal. Quite a few of you are directly aware of this, I'm sure.
Now, the problem here is that the amount of repetitive argumentation and ad nauseum weekly editions of "OMG MINECRAFT" x40, "#sploogetoon" x50, (gee I wonder if those two are a stand in for something for select posters), "Should this game that won't be announced for 12+ months be ported to platform X?", "Let's discuss whether this 20K selling game indicates whether the Vita or the 3DS should have all the third party games or not for eight pages.", and etc discussion has driven off most of the audience for this thread, including the vast majority of the moderators who used to post here over the years. Some weeks even I'm only reading 10-20% of the posts present when I see one of these topics come up. As such, yes, assuredly some bad behavior is being missed when in the 17th post of an argument about the newest Bandai Namco anime title that debuted at 12K - sometimes in the third thread in a row with a lengthy argument about this game - someone was a bit rude to another poster. This is why in warning posts and even ban messages, we've asked for more people to send in PMs if they feel another poster is acting out of line.
There are a few things to keep in mind though.
The first is that we get a lot of PMs. I have 6788 myself, so while they do all eventually get looked at, it doesn't necessarily happen immediately. It's also rather hard to notice you have PMs on mobile, which can delay things further. You should definitely still send them in though.
Beyond that, sales threads have something of an unusual situation in that we want people to feel comfortable taking up more controversial positions. For example, going into a Xenoblade thread and saying the Wii U is bad will probably get you banned. Doing the same in a Vita thread is likely to result in the same. However, the context of that statement is very different in a sales thread. In a sales thread, this type of argument is generally hooked on to a discussion of the relatively low market success of the platforms and their difficulty in selling a variety of types of software. Someone seeing the post "The Wii U is bad platform, port Xenoblade to PlayStation 4!!!" in the Xenoblade OT getting banned, but then seeing "The Wii U is a bad platform, Level 5 should consider porting Yokai Watch: Just Dance to mobile where their other Yokai Watch dancing title succeeded." in the Media Create not get banned could get confused if they don't spend much time contemplating the difference.
However, I suspect most of you have a pretty good idea of what bannable behavior is. If you see it, and it's not being dealt with, the odds are very high that it's simply because we aren't seeing it. So, instead of stewing about how this person isn't getting banned, send in a PM. It's also fine (and helpful!) to send in a collection of posts if you want to illustrate chronic behavior where you feel none of the individual posts are necessarily problematic, but the overall trend is.
I also assure you that we do take all your PMs seriously. When one is received, unless the answer is dead obvious, we usually have 3+ moderators sit down and have a discussion about the post and our policy in general. In the Media Create threads in particular, we have a lot of line skirters, so this also involves tracking pattern behavior and adjusting what we're banning for to try and limit the number of long term troublemakers slipping through the cracks without breaking the spirit of how we moderate. I will note that we don't always send back a reply to your report due to volume, but trust me, it's being read.
Based on what you've told me over the years, a lot of you come from some Italian gaming forum where there were a lot of posters in chronic console wars between Sony and Nintendo. We don't really care about your off site history here until you make it your on site presence, so if someone follows you across the internet and starts harassing you here too, just send in a PM instead of taking snipes back yourself, and pretty soon (if they keep it up) they won't be here, while you still are.
Examples of buying up a project for your console that become "get it here and only here"? Bayonetta 2 seems like an obvious example. RE4? Dead Rising? SFV? FFVIIR (though we have no idea what is even going on there outside of timing)? Shenmue 3? Every single X360 early years jRPG? Sure, they weren't getting bought out to prevent them in general from appearing elsewhere in a scenario where the elsewhere was guaranteed to bomb but they were bought/paid for to have for you and only you (as in the platform holder) as a marketing product. This is really what the crux of my argument is for what Nintendo stands to gain or benefit from.
I think I was unclear here. What I mean is do we have many examples of a company buying an IP where they don't feel they're netting some notable number of people over to their platform.
I feel most of those titles are self evidently containing an audience of at least 500K-1 million people that are being sought after.
We can cover the exceptions though. For Xbox 360 JRPGs, that was part of a general strategy to get Japanese developers on the platform and make the platform seem appealing to Japanese customers. While none of the individual titles were meant to be the winning factor, the overall goal was clear.
For Bayonetta 2, the last game sold 300K+ in Japan (that's pretty good for a core title), and shipped 1.1 million worldwide despite having a publisher who was generally awful at selling AAA games. It was also picked up in a half finished state for pennies on the dollar, and signed at a time when the Wii U had not yet released and Nintendo was presenting the platform as a system for both core and casual gamers. I seriously believe they thought it would sell 1+ million copies and be a differentiator on a system where they had almost every core title. Given Platinum is a sub-200 person studio and currently handling Scalebound, Nier Automata, two Activision licensed game series, Star Fox, and Project Giant Robo, I suspect there isn't a sequel in development.
For Shemue 3, Sony basically paid in very little and gave them a stand on their E3 show floor for some good PR, and it's still actually coming to another platform in the form of the PC. I feel this is notably different than paying for an exclusive, and more akin to throwing in some money for a timed "console first" indie title.
It is still a strong IP and can still move a few hundred thousand even on consoles as history has shown... though on considerably more successful consoles sans the "adequate" quote performance of MH3U on the WiiU (and that came with the caveat of being woven into complimentary co-habitation online with the handheld). I think for Capcom that hypothetical 8:1 ratio is a waste on RoI but to Nintendo, who have already been struggling with home consoles and making their product standout in that regard, securing an exclusive like this not only for their handheld but for their entire ecosystem doesn't seem farfetched.
In general (or a handheld-only scenario), I would see it as a play of simply securing a strong IP to themselves and only themselves.
I may be misjudging things and I may be misguided in my estimations or expectations of how effective that would be in an business argument, but this is simply what seems logical to me. Perhaps, as you say, it really is a pointless venture for Nintendo (and certainly Capcom) to pursue in a scenario of 8:1.
I feel at that point we're accepting that it has appeal to console vendors even if it's notably outclassed by handheld sales. It might not be appealing to Capcom on its own merits, but the argument is essentially "Monster Hunter does help sell home consoles, and is appealing to someone with Nintendo's projected situation for the NX home console."
Also, in order to ultimately happen, at some point it also actually *does* have to become appealing to Capcom. There have been no Wii U versions of Monster Hunter for quite a while, so whatever Nintendo is offering to pay to make that happen is not sufficient for Capcom to want to make it. There is presumably some fee above what Nintendo values the product at where this would be made. It's not like Capcom is sitting there and going "Oh, you'll only give us $100 million to port this to Wii U? Not happening.", and this suggests that Nintendo does not currently value a Monster Hunter home console port to a sufficient level for it to happen.
We can say the same for Sony actually. There is assuredly some cost level where Capcom would make the game for them, but they are not willing to pay it.
This raises a few questions for me:
1.) What level of hardware sales makes it appealing to pay for Monster Hunter ports on home console? So far, based on what's happened, neither the Wii U nor PS4 fit the bill. Does the NX home console have to do even worse than the Wii U for this to be appealing? Is it only appealing if it has more success than the Wii U, because it would assuredly do nothing for the current system? There's also presumably a cut off where a system is so successful that it doesn't make sense to be paying Capcom to do this. Are hardware sales levels actually irrelevant in this scenario?
2.) If hardware sales don't really encapsulate the concept sufficiently, what externalities or other factors make it appealing to pay for this port for NX home console, when it wasn't worthwhile for the Wii U, and so far hasn't proven worthwhile for the PS4?
), even if I might troll I don't insult anyone, first cause I got a certain education from my parents, second cause we are just talking about videogames
