Gears of War sells 2 million

[A Black Falcon]

One of the few things I don't like about playing games online is the morons you run into. Although, that's one of the things I don't like about society in general so there you go.

At least in PC games it's not voice chat...

ABF, please read the entire post before you start to reply. I answered your question before you even asked it.

Question? What question?

Think of the difference between the original Jak & Daxter and Jak 2. When Naughty Dog made Jak grow up a bit, but still retain the cartoon like style and clever humor (for both kids and adults), they sold more games. It went from E rated to T rated, and appealed to far more people. The game still had laugh out loud moments with Daxter, but also had some rather adult moments as well.

Gamers have grown up, and the 360 platform is NOT a Nintendo platform. Microsoft owns them and they aren't going anywhere. Rare would do well to realize who all their audience consists of. Seeing as how Nintendo likely has the "kiddy" market under lock and key, Rare should shift focus even if slightly so they can hope to lure some of the massive Halo and Gears crowd to try something different...but not too radically different as Rare has been trying to do.

First... Rare disagrees, I believe... the X360's problem is that it's not selling enough units. The games sell, but not the hardware... and you will NOT sell more units by just pandering to your base (so Rare makes all FPSes now or something?). You do it by making stuff for other audiences, like Viva Pinata. Now, yeah, Rare probably won't succeed in making the 360 a platform for kids. But I think MS is better off with Rare doing that than just making more games just like all of the other games on the system... (though they did PDZ, so they did one "X360 gamer" title already!)

As for "grown up" kids games, the whole idea has always been stupid. I haven't played the Jak games of course, but the idea that you need to toss in some so-called "mature themes" in order to convince more teenagers that your game isn't "kiddy" is just so stupid that I don't want Rare to go too far along that road... they did do Conker of course, and put in some themes in their other games, but still, it doesn't approach what you suggest, I think (and Conker is not "mature"; it's crude, and M-rated, but not mature.).

What should they do? I mean, Banjo 3 with a serious, depressing plotline or something, and swearing? I hope that's not what you mean... (no, you seem to be saying "they need to make more FPSes", but again. MS already has the console shooter fans locked up. They need MORE than just them, and making another game for Gears fans won't do that. X360 hardware has not been underwhelming analysts for no reason...)