Roxor lawsuit settled, Konami inherits ITG franchise

[dieKatze88]

You guys SUCK.

They OWN IN THE GROOVE NOW

Konami OWNS ALL RIGHTS TO PRODUCE, SELL, ADVERTISE, and PUBLISH IN THE GROOVE.
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Something has gone horribly wrong...

[JQ]

[Nicotine]

[linkismyhero]

[JQ]

[Cutriss]

[linkismyhero]

[Cutriss]

Just give up on him, linkismyhero. They won't read your posts any better than they read mine.
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Sentient Mode is capable...

[linkismyhero]

[Wakka Lakka]

Konami now owns the franchise. Although the press release does not say specifically, 'intellectual property' refers to a host of rights including rights to trade names, trademarks, trade secrets, copyright(including binaries and source codes). I suspect that Konami is free to release ITG2 console if they wish to. If there is some stipulation that they not do so, then their lawyers really blew the handling of the case by accepting the settlement. Roxor could release it too, but that could require franchise fees being paid to Konami. Will Konami actually release it? That depends on several factors including how finished it is, the responsibilites to thrid parties which were inherited (perhaps 'DJ Doo' somehow has a contract for a nickel a copy and Konami doesn't want to pony up) and the degree to which Konami believes ITG affects its DDR line sales. I believe that development of new ITG games is not a realistic option.

[linkismyhero]

[Cutriss]

Also, people will get pretty tired of R21 before long, without song banners and BG images to go with their songs.

[linkismyhero]

[Evil_pied]

I'm going to hazard a guess that konami will not simply "do away" with ITG. The music selection may be changed, and the step charts will prolly suck but I'm betting it'll still be there.

[linkismyhero]

[DDR_mastor1]

idk how likely this is, but it would be cool to see some ITG KO's in DDR or vise versa.
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[linkismyhero]

There is one additional reason why people should hope the ITG line is continued:

Co-op mode.

http://www.naota3k.com/images/itg3ad.jpg

[Zy10]

Alright, so Konami has acquired the intellectual property rights to ITG as a settlement of their lawsuit. I'm not gonna be an armchair lawyer and try and speculate as to the significance of this, the future of ITG3, etc. That will sort itself out regardless of anyone's outside input. What I wanna talk about is the uproar occurring inside the game community over the issue.

The community has always been polarized between DDR and ITG, with the terms "ITG fanboy" and "DDR otaku" being thrown around as the worst insults anyone can muster. Since DDR was the original game, and ITG being the newcomer, just about everything is either an attack on or a defense of ITG/r0x0r games. The #1 attack on ITG is "the music all sucks and the charts are bullshit," with the #1 defense of ITG being "DDR is too easy and its old." The main problem with any of these allegations is that neither sees DDR and ITG as the two completely different games that they truly are.

DDR and ITG are two different games. The obvious distinction is that DDR is Japanese-flavored, while ITG is decidedly western; however, few people realize that what truly makes them different games is that ITG WAS NOT CREATED TO COMPETE WITH DDR. ITG was developed and released after DDR Extreme had been released, and at the time, was planned to be the final mix of DDR. ITG wasn't made to try and compete with DDR; it was, in theory, retired. Rather, the point of ITG was so that the dancing game community would have fresh material after DDR had gone into its planned retirement. The only reason DDR Supernova exists was because the emergence of ITG had Konami realizing that they were abandoning a market that still had life in it. Supernova was, truly, the first dancing game created for the purpose of competing with another game. And my main complaint about Supernova: they made it too western.

Don't get me wrong, I love Supernova and I'm thrilled it exists, but I wish that Konami had kept the Japanese feel of Extreme because that's what made the game different. Konami westernized Supernova in an attempt to attract back customers it felt it had lost to ITG, but in reality, they didn't "lose the customers to ITG," but rather Konami gave up those customers when they didn't release any new arcade mixes for years. Supernova could have very easily kept the original style of DDR and still been just as successful, if not more successful, than it is right now.

I am a fan of DDR, but I am also a fan of ITG. I want to make clear that I am not an "ITG fanboy," as that phrase carries the connotation of one who completely abandons DDR in favor of ITG. I still have a passion for both, and I think the reason I can still find good in both games is that I am not a tip-tier player. A large chunk of the dance game community is made of veterans of the games, who have most of DDR AAA'ed. For these people, it makes sense to move on to primarily play ITG, because they've nowhere left to go on DDR. Any game, even DDR, has finite replayability value. They appreciate ITG because it gives them a new medium to improve their abilities, and continue their passion for a game that they love. Lower-rank players, such as myself, can appreciate ITG because we can play hard mode and work on our accuracy skill and FA, a nice logical extension of playing for PA on DDR. At the same time, we can try expert mode, and still get that exhilarating rush of "oh my god I just passed that song!" that many of us once felt way back in the days of Max1 when we all passed Max 300 for the first time. Remember those days? They seem long ago, but at one point we were all just achieving out first 10-foot, and it gave a feeling of accomplishment that felt amazing. Sadly, for seasoned veterans of DDR, the game can no longer give those moments. Speaking of new challenges, that brings me to a new point...

People complain about how ITG sacrifices play ethics just for challenge. Umm, hate to remind you all, but that's what Max1 did. The introduction of 10's made the bar no longer taboo, and the introduction of speed mods, whether or not the old players liked it, changed the parameters of play for the game. The game needed to evolve, and it could not have expanded in the manner it did if everything was still 1x no bar. Yes, there are old-hat players like Pickles who can still adhere to such old-school rules, but he's part of a very, very, very small crowd with exceptional talent. Whether or not they like it, Konami and r0x0r need to make money off of thier games in order to survive and better serve the paying customer, yes, that's you. And hate to remind ya'll, but Max one also did something else that people demonize ITG for doing: sacrificing music quality for the sake of expansion.

People complain that ITG has horrible music that does nothing but serve the purpose of creating potential for bullshit hard stepcharts, but at the same time, I don't think anyone would argue against the point that Max 300 did the same damn thing. Those 92 seconds of "music" are anything but; Max 300 was nothing but a medium for Konami to produce a crazy hard chart that would change the dynamics of the game forever. To this day, 10's and 10+'s are considered a wholly different entity from normal play. Konami did it with Max 300 and Paranoia Survivor Max, why should we villianize r0x0r for doing it with Pandemonium and Vertex^2?

Further on the topic of music, people rally against ITG's western style of music and say it's poorly done. Yes, the music in ITG is far from the pinnacle of the best electronica the western world has to offer, but at the same time, do you honestly think the music in DDR is the best quality that the Eastern world produces, either? Both are mediocre music from two different genres. The only reason ITG music is so heavily bashed is because here in America we're fully aware of the higher quality music that exists in the same genre. We don't get that wide exposure to Japanese music. The music in ITG was made and selected to cater to and best serve the tastes of American players. At the time ITG was in development, guess what was popular among American players? Western-style electronica/trance that was in such heavy rotation among players in the form of simfiles for Stepmania. Obviously, with r0x0r being a true garage startup company, they wouldn't have the means to license all the music that was already popular, so they tried to emulate that type of music to the best of their ability. With what success they reached that goal is debatable, but the fact stands that at its core, ITG is a grassroots operation, created to the wants of gamers, created by actual gamers, not video game company executives.

Ultimately, I'm not happy that Konami is acquiring ITG. Is it because I feel ITG is superior to DDR and that Konami will destroy ITG because they feel intimidated by such a superior game? Haha, feel free to notice the sarcasm in that statement. NO. I'm upset by the acquisition because it will lessen variety in the dancing game community, and eliminate competition. A friend of mine summed it up better than I ever will: "as DDR players who go to arcades and try to show people up or pet their DDRecall accounts, we all know that competition fosters improvement." Konami makes a good game, but does not have the connection to the community that r0x0r had. I can only hope that Konami will follow in the precedent of ITG and let their product be shaped and improved by the paying customers who follow the game with such a passion.

[linkismyhero]