I suspect Atari is kicking themselves about now.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by spy14
Workbench ruled! It's also rumoured that the greatest version of Civ 1 was the amiga's offering...

I played Civ 1 on the Amiga too, the only version of Civ I've played on the PC was CivNet, which was crap (I didn't like the Windows interface among other things)

[Brutus66]

Originally posted by Adagio


Actually it has the opposite effect, less people buy it because of it

If Civ IV was starforce protected I'm 99% sure that I wouldn't buy it, while now because I've testet it I'm 100% I'm going to buy it

And I know others who feel the same way. There's several games I would love to play (and buy if they were good), but because of their protection I'm staying away from them

Damn...that's what I was going to say...

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Willem


Still, it was a stupid move on their part to sell off a franchise that was pretty much guarenteed to sell well. And now that Civ 4 is getting near perfect reviews, they're probably realizing that. When the first patch comes out, the game will probably be flying off the shelves. They're getting just what they deserve for being shortsighted, and just looking for a quick buck.

But Civ 4 wouldn´t have been such a suxess as it is if Atari/Infogreed had still held on to the franchise. They would have ****ed up this release also, since they are obviously incapable of distinguish between a good game and a pile of ****.

[Brutus66]

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
Seriously though, Atari/Infogrames *ruined* Civ3 and MoO3, which instead of being awesome were both pretty sub-standard games(MoO3 being a complete failure) and that ushered in a new dark age of TBS games that almost threatened to kill the genre. I mean name any worthwhile TBS game that came out in the last 2-3 years.

I think you may be exaggerating a little, but I understand how you feel.
Combat Mission Africa Korps came out about a year ago and I prefer it to even Civ (but I am a wargamer at heart).

[sophist]

Originally posted by Willem
Still, it was a stupid move on their part to sell off a franchise that was pretty much guarenteed to sell well. And now that Civ 4 is getting near perfect reviews, they're probably realizing that. When the first patch comes out, the game will probably be flying off the shelves. They're getting just what they deserve for being shortsighted, and just looking for a quick buck.

You can't make a blanket statement like that. No matter how good something is, there's a price at which it costs too much. Maybe it's dumb to sell the franchise for $5 million, but what about $50 million? What about $200 million? You're looking at the wrong things. What matters is how much Infogrames got for the franchies, how much Take2 put into it in addition to that, and how much profit it's going to make relative to that. Revenue is irrelevant. Sales are irrelevant. All that matters are investment cost and profit.