The Recycle Bin

Bill Harris took ten or so paragraphs to say “don’t release games before they are finished” and “don’t bad mouth your customers” but was an interesting read anyhow. I would not put Out of the Park Baseball or Eastside Hockey Manager on the same tier as PureSim. I think both SI products are a bit more refined and have much longer shelf lives than PureSim. Shaun Sullivan’s game is more in line with some of Grey Dog Software’s basketball products – good games that get better with each new iteration, but with much smaller fan bases. I imagine (with no numbers to back this up) that OOTPB and EHM do much larger sales numbers than either PureSim or Total Pro Basketball.

And to be honest, there is no other text-sim at Football Manager/Championship level, so tier-one is very much an exception and an exclusive club. Maybe if we throw Total Club Football in the mix, but they’ve had their own patch-related issues this year. And I imagine there are quite a few copies of TCF sold around the world.

I also think that while Mr. Harris describes a linear relationship in the ranking and I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. A game like Baseball Mogul has been around for a long time, but I would put it solidly in the third tier, or if we create a PueSim/TCB third tier, Baseball Mogul is in the fourth. You can be a long established text-sim and crank out broken game after broken game, or one that doesn’t evolve with the times. And as far as I can tell, Baseball Mogul fans are so loyal, that they purchase the game in enough numbers to keep the franchise going for all of these years.

Grey Dog announced Total Pro Golf, a career golf sim that looks very interesting on paper. I’ll be curious to see if not being able to play the golfer on the course will be enough to keep people engaged. I’ve lost interest in golf games ever since EA Sports’ cartoony Tiger Woods Golf obliterated the field. Grey Dog may be bring me back at $24.95.

Shaun Sullivan posted some screenshots of the new almanac feature he’d coded for PureSim Baseball 2006. Looks very, very Cato-ish to me.

Sports Interactive announced that SEGA purchased the company yesterday. I’m not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing since the SEGA branch SI dealt with can’t seem to get their games on U.S. retailer shelves. The last time SI was purchased, it ended up in a divorce with the company losing its “Football Manager” rights.

Looks like our little boy is growing up. Out of the Park Baseball has teamed with the Baseball Prospectus to help model injuries in OOTPB 2006. A new screen shot shows the new injury report.

Lot’s of stuff posted at Grey Dog Software. Important news is that a new patch was released for Bowl Bound College Football and there will be a Wrestling Spirit 2 developed by the company. I do love how developers can make lemonade out of lemons. Bragging about 3 and 3.5 star (out of 5) reviews on your front page seems a bit bold, in my honest opinion.

Tom Tippett posted his projections for the upcoming 2006 baseball season. I’m not sure if flipping a coin isn’t as accurate, but it’s fun to read these sorts of predictions.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, mad as hell Marc Duffy posted the release date for Out of the Park Baseball 2006. May 31st seems like a long time to wait, but since we still don’t know how the online portion of the game works (or if it is even coded yet), I’m happy to see that this isn’t be rushed out of the door. I’m just hoping some brave soul converts their current online league to OOTPB 2006 on June 1st so that we can all learn from his or her pain…

There’s a new beta (or “unofficial”) patch available for Baseball Mogul 2007 that addresses many of the initial game killing bugs folks have found since it was released.

A PSP version of Championship Manager 2006 will be released on April 7th, or at least overseas it will be.

For those that missed it, it seems that Markus has stepped into the void left by “mad as hell” Marc Duffy. He posted some very nice screenshots of the new league history that will come standard with OOTP 2006. One the one hand, I’m very happy that the old almanac is gone and a real statistical database will be included. On the other hand, what am I supposed to do with the 13 season history that I maintain for my league?

So many questions….

I only filled out one bracket, and I had Duke winning it all, so I am done. Too bad, because prior to tonight I had my final eight intact. Yet another reason for me to not bet on sports.

Seems Marc Duffy is mad as hell and he’s not going to take it any more! I’ve read the Sports Interactive forums for a long time and the OOTP boards are much tamer on even their worst day. It just seems odd that he would up and stop posting like that. What’s that you ask? Yes, my spider senses are tingling.

Seems you should avoid Baseball Mogul until it is finally ready to be released. Or I should say until the released version actually works.

Sports Mogul, Inc wins the earliest text-baseball release for the new season contest. Baseball Mogul 2007 is available for download for a reasonable $19.95. I might even try it for that amount, a price point the folks at Grey Dog Software need to be introduced to. New features include a pitch-by-pitch mode, a minor league simulation engine, and many more things that move the franchise from its 2004 roots into a more modern simulation.

The web site claims to be the only exclusive licensee of the Sean Lahman Baseball Database. I’m not sure what that means since many other products make the database useable with their game engines.

But when you see “New Lefty-Righty stats!” in a baseball game developed in 2006, you have to scratch your head and wonder. I am intrigued by the “animated play-by-play”, but am put off that I can’t find any screenshots of the game anywhere on the site. No demo + no screenshots = no purchase. A fairly simple equation.