Blizzard isn't trying to trademark it for themselves, they just want it to not be trademarked at all.
Also, just to be clear, Blizzard doesn't want to trademark it for themselves. They just don't want it to be trademarked at all.
Personally, I think it's an assy move for Valve to try and trademark the name of a mod for a game from another company so they can sell their own version of it. Even if one of the guys working on the original is part of it.
I mean, imagine someone makes a really popular mod for Skyrim called "Dragonborn Battle Lords", commonly known as "DBL", and it gets really popular, and then all of a sudden Capcom hires one of the mod designers and says they want to make and sell a game called "DBL II"?
Because Valve REALLY wants to use the name "DOTA", put simply.
I think the reason why Blizzard didn't trademark DotA is because it was a mod and a community driven effort, free to anyone with WC3.
Now that another company is trying to make a new game and use that name to market and sell it, they think it's wrong.
Actually, Valve is making a game with ONE of the developers who worked on ONE version of the mod, which wasn't even the original version of the mod.
And the mod in fact dates back to a Starcraft map, though it had a different name.
先に撃ったのはハンだ！
"Joseph said that he didn't have an erection..."
Yeah, no kidding. Look at those ugly skanks.
I can't be certain, but I believe they stated on their website that they'll be making their stuff available on Android. And I believe you can also read them on any device with browser functionality by visiting vizmanga.com.
Well, Yusuke Naora has actually been the art director for the majority of the 3D games (at least as far back as FFX), if not the actual guy in charge of character design.
I actually just preordered an annual subscription to VIZ's new Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha digital magazine which is starting on the 30th. At only 25 bucks a year (48 issues, 120~ pages each), presented in high quality, with professional translations, about two weeks after being printed in Japan, I felt it was worth it.
Not only that, but I feel it's the kind of distribution method the industry needs to adopt in the West, so I wanted to support it.
IIRC, Skyward Sword only hit the top of the sales chart for one week before subsiding. And it was released kinda late in the year, too.
Xbox 360 installments barely even register in Japan. On weekly charts, games that get into the top 5 with the PS3 version are unlikely to even break into the top 25 with the 360 version.
And there aren't many PS3/Wii or PSP/DS multiplatform games due to the technical gulfs between the hardware.
Yeah, the same thing happened with WoWWiki, which I believe was the largest and most-visited wiki on Wikia. It had originally been independant and joined Wikia for the affordable hosting. Then the Wikia administration decided to force everyone to use that ugly-ass new layout. Almost all the administrators and editors decided to jump ship. Oh, and Wikia also refused to sell them back their domain name.
So after a lot of discussing and searching for a new host, including approaching Blizzard Entertainment themselves for hosting, they moved to the Curse network and changed their name to wowpedia.org. Then Blizzard started supporting it as the "official" wiki by linking to it on almost every section of their official website.
In short, Wikia blows. Having participated in the wowwiki "split", I can say that they're a bunch of dirtbags who don't listen to their clients and care more about ad revenue than anything else.
Okamiden is not much of a sequel. It's sort of Okami: Chibi Version.
It doesn't even pick up where the plot of Okami left off.
And it wasn't by the original developers.
So I'm gonna just echo drizzt_rocks' sentiments. I wish Capcom would get Platinum to develop an Okami 2. A proper Okami 2, starring Amaterasu and set in the Celestial Plain.
Square's actually done a few shooters, they've been trying to break into that market since Dirge of Cerberus, but the genre just hasn't done too well in Japan.
Given that Square Enix is the company that localizes and publishes the Call of Duty games (among others) in Japan, I'm sure they want to do as much as they can to get it to catch on.
I basically mentioned this in my own comment, but this is exactly right.
The response from studios shouldn't be, "They're downloading this stuff for free instead of paying $20 a DVD for it! Fuck them!"
It should be, "How can we make an attractive, affordable model for these people to buy our product instead of downloading it for free from other sources?"
I'm not saying piracy is right, but you also can't deny that they've got a business model that's trying to sell products to a niche market that can easily get them for free. Selling ice to eskimos, as it were.
There's a balance that they can strike, and they need to find it.
It took the music industry a while to figure it out, but they finally did. It's called iTunes. Print media is transitioning into e-readers. It doesn't eliminate piracy, but there are a lot of people willing to pay a slight premium to get their stuff quickly and in high quality, with no fuss or muss.
It's time for the anime and manga industries to start thinking like they're in the year 2012.
The American anime and manga bubble is certainly in the process of bursting, however I wouldn't jump to heap all of the blame on fansubs and scanlations on it.
Certainly, it plays a role. However, just as in the music industry, the fact is that distributors need to look into offering affordable digital distribution. Viz and Funimation have been doing a pretty good job. Viz's free streaming of Naruto subs is one of the better methods I've seen, and it's well done, too.
DVD sales have declined not just in the US but also in Japan. While for quite some time the Japanese studios made the bulk of their money off merchandise (as the shows aired for free on TV), in the 90s and 00s they made quite a bit of money off VHS and DVD sales. Now, with free distribution online (pirated or streamed), they're having to return to merchandise.
There's currently a severe lack in mainstream anime titles that will be marketable in the west, too. Even the Japanese recognize that their productions have been of an inferior quality as late. The fact is, even if American companies licensed more shows, it's unlikely that any will have the same sort of impact that Dragon Ball Z or its contemporaries had.
The Saturday Morning cartoon market has also just completely died in the US. In the 90s and 00s, several network TV channels had 8 hour lineups on Saturday Mornings, often with at least 2-6 anime each, everything from Digimon and Pokemon to Dragon Ball Z and Escaflowne. Not to mention Sunday Mornings and afternoon lineups on weekdays. Those simply don't exist anymore. Even Cartoon Network has cut back their anime lineups pretty dramatically.
Most importantly, I suppose it has to be said that trying to sell people things they can easily get for free might not always be the best business decision. In the digital age, do the fans even WANT to buy licensed / dubbed anime or manga? Even going back ten years, there was a strong sentiment amongst fans that dubbing and translating often ruined the program they were fans of.
Face it, a $20 DVD with four (potentially poorly translated) episodes of an anime is going to be a hard sell to any fan, especially when they had the option to download it six months earlier with high-quality translations supervised by fans.
And that gets back to my first point. How can dubbing anime in today's market even be seen as a viable business decision to begin with? Anime has fallen out of the mainstream in the US, and until some major titles come out of Japan which can draw a lot of attention, or until they can find some new ways to get young kids watching them on TV, I don't see how they'll ever succeed with the current business model of "put out dubs six months after they air in Japan".
Look to Viz and Funimation with their streaming subbed anime. Look to iTunes, to Comixology. Therein likes the answer. If companies want to profit off this stuff, they need to get with the times.
There's actually a pretty huge range of NPCs they can make playable, and plenty of opportunities to create new characters based on what's been revealed about the setting.
Jubei, Kokonoe, Phantom, Saya, and Tenjou's son are all probably shoe-ins for BB3.
There are ten other families of the Duodecim that have yet to be represented by characters.
There are also some military branches in the NOL that haven't been represented by any characters, notably the NOL Airforce, who wear green uniforms and use small armagus gliders called Shebalves. There's also the Relief Corps and the Imperial Palace Guards.
Not to mention the Invictus (second-in-command of the NOL) who hasn't been revealed yet.
There might be some members of the Magic Guild still kicking around. The next Phase novel is going to introduce a couple more, seemingly including a warlock.
Taking into account time travel possibilities, there's the potential for characters from the prequel novels to show up, such as Tomonori (Jubei's brother), or Bloodedge (the version of Ragna that fought the Black Beast during the Dark War).
I actually can't help but think that the R will stand for "Riot" because of all the names BB went through before they decided on BB.
Blue Blood -> Blue Bloods -> The Blue Blood -> Vergatorion: The Blue Blood ->
Riot: The Blue Blood -> RiotBlue -> RiotBlue: Calamity Trigger ->
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
Maybe "BlazBlue: Cerulean Riot".
