Pretty awesome in that respect, difficult to dislike a game that shapes itself to your needs.

Don't put too much credence in Derek Smart's legal analysis stated in his posts.

Wasn't scott on here talking about how much money they were getting from take two, and how great a deal it was for them?

The studio did confirm that the DNF team has been let go, but expressed a desire to "co-create" games based on the character in the future.

When people say something like this, they so clearly do not understand marketing at all, especially the principles of positioning. No character can ever topple Duke as the leading WASP action hero, just as no character will ever topple Lara Croft as the leading female action/adventurer. Think of these characters as the Coke and Pepsi of the game industry. These characters earned their leading spots by being the first of their kind, and by being great at what they do. Much like James Bond, who is the quintessential action spy -- there have many many attempts to top Bond but it will never be done, as he was the first and the first practically always wins (unless they self-destruct, but that's another story).

Duke and Lara will be around 20 years from now, still the leading action gaming characters of their type.

I'm sure you know a game wins. Most hit movies cost $40 plus million, and often much higher, so the studio is in a big hole to begin with. DNF will cost $5 million tops to make on all platforms, and make the publisher at least $200 million gross across all platforms. So right away the game has a huge advantage.

FYI, if you read the company's annual report, you'll see that Take2 paid a $12 million fee to acquire the publishing rights to DNF, and the first half was paid upon signing, with the second half due upon the game's release. This is an unrecoupable fee, not a recoupable advance. This fee does not affect royalties. And 3DR still owns the franchise.

On the other hand, it's clear I have no native talent with this game and the progression is slow. I still can't go halfway down the set list (sorted by difficulty) without hitting a brick wall on Hard. Some stuff just seems like my brain flat out can't grip it. For example, for the life of me I can't pass Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac because of that rapid series of B+O, O notes. My brain just can't figure out how to tell my fingers to hit those for some reason.

When people say something like this, they so clearly do not understand marketing at all, especially the principles of positioning. No character can ever topple Duke as the leading WASP action hero, just as no character will ever topple Lara Croft as the leading female action/adventurer.

Yeah, this is me.  It doesn't matter how much my wife and i play, we've both kind of hit a wall.  I still have fun, but I'm not getting any better and some songs and difficulties are just impossible no matter how much I play.

Checking list on wikipedia

Putting Wii Sports on the list is cheating.

GTA:SA

a symbol of all that is bad with the game industry.

And crunch is a consequence of bad planning, something 3dr seems to be familiar with.

To think that an IP would be the main driver of games sales and not gameplay shows how much he missed the point.

Your missing the part he was wrong about there. He wasn't totally wrong about the IP being important (just look at the number of sequels on the list) rather he was wrong that the main character was the single most important defining factor of the IP.

Yes, I conflated IP and character. Certainly Halo has IP assets that help Halo 3 sell millions, but it's not because of Master Chief.