Commercial Games

[Bronek]

Spend the money on making a very developer friendly site, with everything a developer needs to know to develop on the Pandora, and a place to host and showcase the latest and greatest games and applications for it. This is one of the biggest reasons for wanting to buy a Pandora, the software, so push for an official and professional site for one! If this doesn"t come to be, perhaps a few people in the community are interested in doing one ourselves?

I need to quote this once more. This is very important. A central unified site with news about every important new release, perhaps different categories for commercial games, ports, homebrew, emulators, applications. The biggest news need to be delivered to every Pandora as well as every Pandora user via email. It should be easy to disable this but it should be enabled by default.
The central site should include a complete database of commercial games and apps. If they are not sold on the site directly, a link to the place where you can buy it (Clickgamer, developer"s site, ...) needs to be provided.

actually, I support this view. It is more important to make development as easy as possible and give visibility to developed software, than to ensure that there are specific commercial games available early.

PS the trick is to replace apostrophe with double quotes

 

[Miknal]

I tell you what, NO ONE on this earth would buy a Handheld for over $300 to play ONE game.

Don't underestimate the foolishness of the masses. I had a friend who bought a PS3 for the seemingly sole purpose of playing FFXII. He also bought other games, but they were all second string to Final Fantasy.
Shortly after I pointed out that FFXII was a PS2 game, he accused me of sleeping with his fiance. We're no longer friends.
Moral of the story: if you pick the right game, yes, someone out there will spend $300 (or $600 as the case may be) just to play that game, whether they need to or not.

Actually I believe the moral of that story is that there are crazy, crazy people in the world.

 

[clippa]

if you pick the right game, yes, someone out there will spend $300 (or $600 as the case may be) just to play that game

Yeah, Nintendo have been doing that for years. After mario and zelda, you have a job finding decent games for their systems, and now that they're trading in control gimmicks, I imagine the number of good games is shrinking fast. Although I've heard "Arm Flail Apocalypse IV" is a classic.

 

[lulzfish]

The Pandora can do a lot of stuff without games, so people might think, "It`s a portable computer, AND there`s at least one game I like for it. That`s worth buying the system"

And I can say from personal experience, it was probably worth the price of my PS2 to have Ace Combat and Shadow of the Colossus. Although I never finished Ace Combat, it's too difficult.
But still!

 

[zaoin]

I think better leaked and released games(like anidudes, xploids, tombraider, Neverwinter Nights,MTX: Mototrax ...) from tapwave zodiac because of 480*320 screen and analog.

An official palmos(OS5) emulator to use the massive palmos software.

World of Goo is impressive.
Soldat(www.soldat.pl) would be incredible!

 

[Macleod]

Another good indie game that nobody has mentioned is New Star Soccer 4.
IMO this would be a great fit for Pandora.

 

[Vorporeal]

Soldat would be nice to see on the Pandora. I played it, years ago. You'd definitely lose a bit going from the mouse+keyboard to an analog stick+buttons, but it would still be a lot of fun (especially if playing against other people on Pandora).

 

[emcp]

Spend the money on making a very developer friendly site, with everything a developer needs to know to develop on the Pandora, and a place to host and showcase the latest and greatest games and applications for it. This is one of the biggest reasons for wanting to buy a Pandora, the software, so push for an official and professional site for one! If this doesn''''t come to be, perhaps a few people in the community are interested in doing one ourselves?

I''ll second that line of thought. Anything past this would be the cherry on the top.

yeah the great thing about the internet is its pretty cheap to do such a thing
it basically time, and im pretty sure the pandora team would be more than skilled and if not another member of the community


Time is a cost. You need to spend A LOT of time, if you want to create and maintain a serious SDK and a serious site (see maemo for example). That would require some full-time effort for some months (at least)...


WELL no duh, maybe you missed the other part of my reply in the misquote
i said the pandora team or another community member, who would freely spend time, were do you think free opensource homebrew comes from, people spend time on it for free, and while the SDK may take more effort a site is fairly quickly to set up compared to a good fps, also its also the pandora teams untold responsibility to actually provide support for its own console <_<

also another reason for world of goo is
its getting quite popular and its a bit more recent and mainstream than the other suggestions, so even the mention of a pandora port available on 2dboys website will attract people, asking what the pandora is

btw world of goo has user content doesnt it, i have the wii version which i dont believe does, if theres no user content just drop it, we need something to live the lifespan of the console fairly well, maybe even have an agreement for future puzzle like games

 

[conso]

btw world of goo has user content doesnt it, i have the wii version which i dont believe does, if theres no user content just drop it, we need something to live the lifespan of the console fairly well, maybe even have an agreement for future puzzle like games

It has - indirectly. As far as I know, you need a special tool to activate and create user-content, but afaik (again) it's open source and hosted on sourceforge. So I guess, the answer is "yes" it has user-content and there is a pretty high chance, that would also be available for pandora

 

[Trip]

Isn't World of Goo controlled by just the touch screen/stylus?.
The full on gaming controls are one of the biggest selling points of the Pandora, and to pay out for software that doesn't even use them would be just plain silly IMO.

Don't get me wrong, it looks like a great game and I'd love to play it on my Pandora (when I get it). Chances are that the developer will port it anyway when the Pandora gets a big enough user base, and we can get that user base easily enough by choosing software that takes full advantage of the Pandora's more unique features.

That was actually why the PC version of Raven Shield was the first game I thought of, it could use all of the Pandoras controls..

• Control the character with the joy sticks and buttons
• Use the joypad for the quick select menu,
• Use the keyboard as normal,
• Use the touch screen/stylus for creating way points etc. in the map and for choosing the weapons when kitting yourself out.

There are other reasons why I think it would be a good choice as well though..

• It's still a great looking game that should run well on the Pandora
• It's still got a strong community behind it
• Advanced single player and top multi-player gaming
• There are 2 official updated versions for it + 1000's of fan made maps and add-ons available on-line
• It would get the unreal engine ported at the same time which could lead to ports of other games that rely on it

That's my reasoning anyway

 

[emcp]

Isn't World of Goo controlled by just the touch screen/stylus?.
The full on gaming controls are one of the biggest selling points of the Pandora, and to pay out for software that doesn't even use them would be just plain silly IMO.

Don't get me wrong, it looks like a great game and I'd love to play it on my Pandora (when I get it). Chances are that the developer will port it anyway when the Pandora gets a big enough user base, and we can get that user base easily enough by choosing software that takes full advantage of the Pandora's more unique features.

That was actually why the PC version of Raven Shield was the first game I thought of, it could use all of the Pandoras controls..

• Control the character with the joy sticks and buttons
• Use the joypad for the quick select menu,
• Use the keyboard as normal,
• Use the touch screen/stylus for creating way points etc. in the map and for choosing the weapons when kitting yourself out.

There are other reasons why I think it would be a good choice as well though..

• It's still a great looking game that should run well on the Pandora
• It's still got a strong community behind it
• Advanced single player and top multi-player gaming
• There are 2 official updated versions for it + 1000's of fan made maps and add-ons available on-line
• It would get the unreal engine ported at the same time which could lead to ports of other games that rely on it

That's my reasoning anyway

the only negative against world of goo would be, theres a fair chance it will come
also your not going to get something to totally use the pandora, world of goo would show of the screen quite nice, also i think it needs to be either a fps or a casual game, btw the screen isnt exactly pandora if you know what i mean but then what is (analogue and stylus i guess)

 

[kollau]

Hm, I really don't know.

IF there will be a commercial game for the Pandora, it should be something unique, different. Why should someone play some (rather) unknown racing game if he has Need for Speed on his PSP? And someone who wants to play GTA, will play GTA and not Mafia on a second handheld. (sometimes I had the feeling, that this is a "what's your favorite game (which could run on the Pandora)?"-thread, hehe )

World of Goo sounds therefore pretty interesting, yet, I doubt that it will remain that famous as it is right now.
Imagine the pandora team spending money for this game as soon as the Pandora comes out - but no one cares anymore, because they want something different now.

One main fact to get peoples attention are the graphics. The game should look impressiv, so that each DS and PSP owner would wow.

So I thought Operation Flashpoint, AquaNox or Outcast were nice due their cult status, pioneer graphics (back then) and still active fan base. This could lead to quite some "hardcore" gamers instead of the big masses. Afterwards one could still try to reach EA, Valve, id etc. if those games were successful.
Yet, they're old quite old and there are some license problems (different developer/publisher now) - and the fan base is limited.

The pandora is superior to the DS and the PSP - and this is what people must see, if you want to sell a large number of consoles. This is, you have to take advantage of every single muscle the Pandora has. A game that is just impossible on other handhelds. Using the whole power of the Pandora, showing the great display, the touchscreen possibilities, a bombastic sound and the use of the keybord (for example for chatting online which is a pain in the ass with other handhelds)

And I don't know which game this could be - if it already exists.

Indie games are fun and a "multimedia"-handheld like the Pandora is just perfect for some minutes of actions between an ebook and a movie. But many people want to be busy with one game for several hours (in a train for example) when they spend that money on a handheld. Maybe a MMO would be good. Yet, most people being interested in this genre will rather play WoW etc. on their PC. Chuchurocket was fun as well as Crazy Taxi, but I doubt they will be interesting. At least less than Shenmue.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is also a fun game and would be really nice. Thinking of people using the stylo, drawing objects which react physically, that's just cool, but after two hours you did all levels, wont do them again and I, for example, didnt care about additional levels anymore.

Half-Life sounds great too, but I don't want Steam on my Pandora, hehe. And even though there are a lot of (nice) mods, I don't think many people want to buy HAlf-Life again. Once you know the story, you sort of lose the interest. At least I did. Sven Co-Op is fun, but I wouldnt like playing with the keyboard. CS won't run and now there is nothing left for the mod argument.

If selling a lot of Pandoras is the main thought behind this discussion, then I'd recommend a game like "The Sims". Taking care of his/her character/family wherever you are, mmh, that could be interesting for a lot people who used to have Tamagothics when they were young

I'd personally prefer one "game pack" with (maybe elected by a poll in this forum) 'the best' freeware games ported for the Pandora. That way, one could include "by buying this console, you'll get a download link for 5/20/50 games - for free!"
This could help to spread the idea of free software, opensource. Many people don't know that there are a lot of great games out there.
The commercial games may just follow.

(In my dreams, I prefer a RPG which can be played online and offline like Diablo II. A big, realistic world as in Shenmue, a cool, interesting story like in Outcast and an addictive soundtrack like Zelda's soundtrack )

 

[conso]

My top titles:

the realistic ones:
prey
cletus clay
zeno clash
audiosurf
world of goo
castle crashers
the blob
bullet candy (robotron-clone, like geometry wars is, but not a geometry wars-clone)
fizzball
golf?
multivinia
emerald city confidential

The unrealistic ones
3d-jump-n-runs like sonic adventure or Psychonauts
GTA3+-like tiltes like GTA(3,VC,SA), saints row, true crime, total overdose, Postal 1/2/3 and even The simpsons: Hit and Run
Football games in the style of FIFA/PES
ahm... and... little big planet ^^

 

[Bronek]

My top titles:

the realistic ones:
prey
cletus clay
zeno clash
audiosurf
world of goo
castle crashers
the blob
bullet candy (robotron-clone, like geometry wars is, but not a geometry wars-clone)
fizzball
golf?
multivinia
emerald city confidential

what about snooker game ?

 

[Eniko]

Finally someone seconded Audiosurf! I still think it'd be great for the Pandora, because it's easy to just pick up and play a round or two.

 

[conso]

Finally someone seconded Audiosurf! I still think it'd be great for the Pandora, because it's easy to just pick up and play a round or two.

yes, I think audiosurf is a great game. I'm just a little concerned it might attract the wrong audience (steam hardcore gamers ^^). Also, I remember the developer has said it's so heavily programmed around directX, he doesn't want to bother with other platforms at all.

My number one stays prey. Also, craig would have a proof for his claim that doom3 would run on pandora.

 

[Svartalf]

My number one stays prey. Also, craig would have a proof for his claim that doom3 would run on pandora.

I suspect all you'd need is to get signoff from 2K and 3DRealms and then hand Ryan Gordon a Pandora.

 

[conso]

My number one stays prey. Also, craig would have a proof for his claim that doom3 would run on pandora.

I suspect all you'd need is to get signoff from 2K and 3DRealms and then hand Ryan Gordon a Pandora.


Wouldn't he be in a far better position to discuss it with 2K and 3DRealms?

Does he even know of the pandora? Any feedback from him?

 

[PoisonedV]

My top titles:

the realistic ones:
prey
cletus clay
zeno clash
audiosurf
world of goo
castle crashers
the blob
bullet candy (robotron-clone, like geometry wars is, but not a geometry wars-clone)
fizzball
golf?
multivinia
emerald city confidential

The unrealistic ones
3d-jump-n-runs like sonic adventure or Psychonauts
GTA3+-like tiltes like GTA(3,VC,SA), saints row, true crime, total overdose, Postal 1/2/3 and even The simpsons: Hit and Run
Football games in the style of FIFA/PES
ahm... and... little big planet ^^

realistic ones
>castle crashers
>zeno clash
>audiosurf
i lold, especially since your unrealistic title 'total overdose' would be far more likely than any of the other ones

 

[Phawx]

Jebus Cakes I just want my Pandoras already! I *seriously* need to stop coming to these forums. I was hoping I could tide myself over with all of the off-topic sillyness we've been enjoying and wait for the CNC case to arrive.

Have I mentioned I fucking HATE DELAYS. What a terrible situation. I wish I was completely ignorant to the Pandora and only found out about it when they will be shipping. They needed all of our money to make it happen however, but god damn.