Open Letter to Telltale, anyone reading this forum (The XBox issue)
Hi All,
I know this is a somewhat tricky issue but this will be an open letter to telltale from me. I own an xbox 360, and wanted to have my say on franchises I love and put a lot of time and money into via merchandising, such as JP and the Walking Dead. I apologise if this has been done before but I wanted to put my views forward and have them heard at least.
First off, I got nothing against PS3 or PC owners. Gamers are gamers, and I dont like the idea of non first party exclusives as I think it's deliberately designed to exclude people. I dont think any REAL gamer would wish games withheld from fellow gamers who happen to have different consoles.
I also have put what I would honestly say more love into JP and Walking Dead than many others . I am sure others in this forum feel the same since we all care enough to sign up and talk about it.I saw JP in awe as a child, brought all the action figures, including a big playset of the compound, books, mags, cards, you name it. Walking Dead, I have been a fan of the comics since it started, long before it was a popular tv show. I have every single trade and have my eyes on the action figures coming out.
So I feel that as someone who has love for both franchises, its a bit unfair I might miss out because I dont own a PS3 and because my technical knowhow on PCs is limited and my PC is not a games PC.
I genuinely would love both the walking dead and JP games but I fear because of back to the future, I will not be seeing either any time soon.
I understand there were some problems with Microsoft, from what I hear, with previous telltale games...and I know Microsoft can be greedy little SOBs. But thats no reason to punish potentially millions of customers who own their platform such as myself who certainly dont agree with many buisness practicies and moves they make. That hurts the products potential audience and the fanbase more than Microsoft.
I just want to know...a straight awnser if possible. Is there any hope of either game coming to xbox 360? If not, fine, I just want to at least not be strung along and told ''we are listening to fans who want it'' but without any real reply. I just want some honesty. If its not coming at all, I would rather know. Maybe there are factors that stop total honesty or discussions, but I would at least, if possible, like to know if there is ANY hope at all of seeing these games or if I should just give up following them and getting excited now.
I hope we can have a decent discussion on this full of maturity, honesty and most of all, fellow fans and gamers making good discussion and debate.
cheers, and hopefully this forum will be worth sticking around
I know this is a somewhat tricky issue but this will be an open letter to telltale from me. I own an xbox 360, and wanted to have my say on franchises I love and put a lot of time and money into via merchandising, such as JP and the Walking Dead. I apologise if this has been done before but I wanted to put my views forward and have them heard at least.
First off, I got nothing against PS3 or PC owners. Gamers are gamers, and I dont like the idea of non first party exclusives as I think it's deliberately designed to exclude people. I dont think any REAL gamer would wish games withheld from fellow gamers who happen to have different consoles.
I also have put what I would honestly say more love into JP and Walking Dead than many others . I am sure others in this forum feel the same since we all care enough to sign up and talk about it.I saw JP in awe as a child, brought all the action figures, including a big playset of the compound, books, mags, cards, you name it. Walking Dead, I have been a fan of the comics since it started, long before it was a popular tv show. I have every single trade and have my eyes on the action figures coming out.
So I feel that as someone who has love for both franchises, its a bit unfair I might miss out because I dont own a PS3 and because my technical knowhow on PCs is limited and my PC is not a games PC.
I genuinely would love both the walking dead and JP games but I fear because of back to the future, I will not be seeing either any time soon.
I understand there were some problems with Microsoft, from what I hear, with previous telltale games...and I know Microsoft can be greedy little SOBs. But thats no reason to punish potentially millions of customers who own their platform such as myself who certainly dont agree with many buisness practicies and moves they make. That hurts the products potential audience and the fanbase more than Microsoft.
I just want to know...a straight awnser if possible. Is there any hope of either game coming to xbox 360? If not, fine, I just want to at least not be strung along and told ''we are listening to fans who want it'' but without any real reply. I just want some honesty. If its not coming at all, I would rather know. Maybe there are factors that stop total honesty or discussions, but I would at least, if possible, like to know if there is ANY hope at all of seeing these games or if I should just give up following them and getting excited now.
I hope we can have a decent discussion on this full of maturity, honesty and most of all, fellow fans and gamers making good discussion and debate.
cheers, and hopefully this forum will be worth sticking around
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Comments
For JP, there are no platforms announced yet. Maybe you'll luck out. If you don't, however, it would be far better to direct complaints to Microsoft. I fear that right here, you're not addressing the root of the problem.
/edit: It IS worth sticking around. Honestly.
And I'm absolutely sure the following posts will prove this.
I'm sure if Telltale REALLY do want to make its games avalible to everyone, they can.
MS are no angels, this I know...but every other publisher seems to work things out with them ok. I can't help but wonder if TT denied BTTF as a gesture to Microsoft rather than genuine difficulties of putting it on xbox. I'm sure if they wanted to work something out, they could.
I can't do anything about MS. Trust me, I KNOW that they are flawed, and are pretty much idiots about some things (the whole refusing to open xbox to community created content like for example campaigns for left 4 dead and other community creation tools). But I dont think I and others should be punished for that.
I don't blame TT at all by the way, sometimes hassles are a pain. But denying two or three series with huge amounts of fans on every console is somewhat self defeating, if only because they will be cutting off a HUGE amount of potential audience.
I'm sure BTTF will do VERY well on PC and PS3, but why limit yourself when you have potentially millions of other customers?
I just dont have the money any more to go out and buy a PS3 or new gaming PC, as much as I would love to. It's just not feasable at the moment. If I could for these games, I would.
They haven't offically announced anything yet about what consoles Jurassic park will be going to. However, I would think since BTTF when to PS3 then Jurassic Park will be going there as well. But perhaps later on, and if there's enought demand for it, we'll see Jurassic Park and/or Back to the Future on the 360.
I'm a bit of a PS3 fanboy. I admit that. But I can understand what your talking about and I think it does suck that some will not be able to play what could possibly be the best video game based off the Jurassic Park franchise ever. I hope that this one does go multy platform but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
I'm a bit of a 360 fan boy too. There's nothing wrong with console preference, the whole console wars thing is fun if you can not take it too seriously.
But I always do feel for PS3 owners when something good for 360 is not announced for PS3. Because I simply think , instead of gloating, well the shoe is going to be on the other foot sometime, and how would I feel then if people gloated about it? So I always feel sympathy because I know how I would feel.
It would honestly be a shame especially to see jurassic park and walking dead- not to insult back to the future, but as you say JP has a much bigger audience, and walking dead is a smash hit tv show now- never come to all platforms. They are mass audiences and deserve to be treated as such.
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22396&page=5
I have to assume this means it's getting a 360 release.
I honestly could kiss you right now
I mean thats how the majority of games are sold anyway, so it would expand the audience even further, to the casuals who might not bother with digital downloads and wouldnt otherwise know there WAS a new JP or walking dead game.
what do ya think?
BTTF just arrived and is Apples game of the week. I'm assuming it may more than likely arrive for iPad, however, with no announcement I'm hoping at least for 360.
I don't pc game...
So I'm hoping with all of you 360 gamers, too...in case iOS is left out of this one.
For me I am a PC only gamer, so I am glad Telltale prioritize my platform (and the platform adventure games were born on). That said I do agree that as many people as possible should have access to every game. There are many console games I wish I could play on my PC.
That said I would guess that if the PC/iOS/Mac versions sell amazingly well that they might get a publisher to pay for a mass retail release.
Just ''maybe''.
I mean if TT are probably never going to get it on 360, I would rather know and not keep hoping and being strung along. I would rather know straight up if its likely to happen or not. I dont see the secrecy and why TT cant give a straight awnser about it.
It's probably very up in the air.
Right now, all I can really say is that we are continuing to work with platform holders to get our games out to as many folks as possible. We don't have any console platforms for Jurassic Park to announce at this time though.
That's really all I have to say right now, but I'll leave you with this. If let's say, the Schick razor company wanted to sell their products at Target stores, but went around saying this and that about Target, would Target be thrilled to carry Schick products?
That would indeed solve the problems Telltale has with XBLA, but it'd also open a share of new problems.
1. To start, a disc release can't happen until every episode is released. 360 gamers wouldn't be able to start the series until long after it's finished on the PC. I'd like to turn your attention to the only time so far Telltale has given an episodic series a console disc release: The Wii versions of the first two Sam and Max seasons. Season One came to the Wii a year and a half after it finished on the PC. Season Two took two years. As Wallace and Gromit has shown, XBLA isn't friendly to Telltale's episodic format and has caused the episodes horrible delays, but a disc release would mean waiting even longer.
2. The thing about digital distribution is there's no middleman to deal with, meaning most (if not all) of the profits can go straight to the developer. With a disc release, that isn't the case. To start, they'll need a publisher (the Wii versions of the first two Sam and Max seasons were published by The Adventure Company and Atari, respectively), so some of the profits need to go to them. The discs would be sold in stores, so profits need to go to them. People have to manufacture and ship the discs, so profits have to go to them. It ends up being a lot less convenient for Telltale.
3. There's no guarantee it'd be a proper port. The Wii versions of Sam and Max were...not unplayable, but they had their share of problems. Granted, the porting was handled by The Adventure Company and Atari. I'm sure it would've turned out better if Telltale had handled it themselves. But that's just thing: Right now they're working on BttF, Jurassic Park, The Walking Dead, Fables, Puzzle Agent 2, King's Quest, and who knows what else that they're not ready to announce just yet. Telltale's not a big company, and there's so much work spent on making new games they can't bother with re-releasing older ones. Any disc releases would probably be ported by another company, and whether they'd do a good job or not is anyone's guess.
While I don't work for them and can't say for sure, I seriously doubt Telltale will give one of their episodic series a disc release for the Xbox 360. I can see it happening on the Wii just because WiiWare is incredibly restrictive, but for the 360 XBLA would really be the better option.
I know this is an XBox 360 thread/topic (which I own also) however, I do wonder about arrival on iPad being a likely platform candidate or not?
I don't have a great gaming pc so it's really down to XBox or iPad...
Crosses fingers.
Between those two its prolly gonna be xBox because a game that holds this kind of graphics and power could possibly blow up your iPad (although im hoping for both also)... but then again, Telltale has suprised me in teh past, mostly on that night when they released that amazing debut trailer of the upcoming Jurassic Park game!
Its just a shame to see the license wasted on a limited audience.
When companies care more about petty arguments than the fanbase, is it a wonder piracy is rife these days?
There's more to it than I know, obviously, and that I will ever know. But hurting me as a fan of the series doesn't endear telltale OR microsoft to me. I cant speak for anyone else, thats just me.
Cause I know you're not talking about something you shave with. lol
?
A razor is something you shave with
LOL No
I mean...thats exactly what a razor is
something you shave with
so I was confused why you thought otherwise
What exactly are you talking about here cause I don't know. lol
EDIT!
OH! Shoot, I feel stupid. Scratch that. I totally overlooked a previous post. lol My bad. The reason I got confused was because I missed that first post and I could have sworn that there's a portable device called a Razor. But I didn't think it was anything that could play games. I thought it was a phone or something.
Don't mind me. It's 2 am over here. I'm going to bed. lol
well the post I was replying to was the one about razors and target
lol you are confusing me now dude
But the vast majority of game sales are made through retail
Not entirely true..while there are a number of sales at retailers, a majority of all games bought are on Digital Distribution.
Unless it's it's AAA games, such as Halo, and Call Of Duty, and Sports games.
I'm not against your decision to have JP on a console, infact I would love it.
But Reality does come into play.
Sorry but it was mentioned that it was just the PC version, being played with an xbox controller. There is still no mention on what platforms Jurassic Park will be released on.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/reviews/previews/8658-Hands-on-Preview-Jurassic-Park
As far as I'm aware, there's no confirmation of "playing...on a xbox" in there. They only showed/demoed the game at the "Telltale's presentation" on the PC WITH a Xbox 360 Controller, which can be used on the PC version. That's what the author was referring to.
I think "trophies" might be a more appropriate word than "achievements" here, though.