Boom Blox head tracking Easter Egg cut by EA
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 12:00pm by Jack
EA has decided to pull the head-tracking Easter Egg from Steven Spielberg’s Boom Blox title. Question of the Day: Is there no game EA can’t soil?
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April 15th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
When they finally seen to doing something innovative, they cut it off. Who does understand what EA do? Well, I was going to buy it just to see how does it works in a real game… too bad they did it. Count me out on this one.
Best!
April 15th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Shame. Still interested, though.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Epic fail.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Oh, oh man, that blows. I’m not really that interested in this game, but I would have totally gotten it to try out this head tracking thing. EA strikes again.
They probably have some other game planned for it, but they want to have some expensive bullcrap to sell you with it.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Like McClain142 I would have bought the game just to try the head tracking out. Now it’s gone, I certainly won’t be getting it.
April 15th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Man, I am glad my friend chose to stop working at EA – I think he realized EA wasn’t as cool as he expected.
Now we know this, he probably would have been ashamed for working at EA had he not quit.
(Note: from what I hear, EA treats employees like slaves…per my friend’s experience.)
April 15th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
How practical was this application going to be? You gonna wear two LEDs on your head? Why spend resources on something no one is going to use?
Besides, Nintendo probably “persuaded” them to axe it, as I can see it being a feature of the Wii’s successor.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Although it’s sad that this feature is gone, BoomBlox will still be fun and most people (myself included) never would’ve bothered making their own headset anyway.
This isn’t like Rock Band Wii, or even the recent Worms Wii game, where everything is suddenly gimped by the lack of key features… it’s just one “neat but mostly useless” idea removed from an already solid game. The biggest shame is how EA announced the easter egg already and now will have to go back on their word.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I’d like to think it was lack of time, resources, or heck, maybe it wasn’t more than a modified version of the target demo we’ve seen with no gameplay in it so they cut it.
Still, with no official reason, it’s a shame EA didn’t try to show us a glimpse of what a future game could be. Meh.
April 15th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
all you saying it was too much effort, johnny lee already set the ground work and implimented it himself for his own project. if one guy can do it in weeks, EA had time to make it work for boom blox. second, considering it was announced that it was in boom blox months ago, its hard to believe it wasnt already in boom blox when they announced it, or they had already started working on it.
i hope EA isnt that incompetent that they couldnt finish what they started with such a simple project.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
EA is an enigma to me. In my opinion, EA has backed the Wii better than any other 3rd party publisher. While I wish head tracking was included, it is not a deal breaker. The Rock Band issue concerns me more, but is as much Nintendo’s fault as anybody else’s.
April 15th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
BOYCOTT EA!
It is the only way to make them stop fucking us over.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
I boycotted EA games a long while ago but this game was actually beginning to convince me to bend the rules on that boycott. It seemed EA was cool again. Guess not.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Oh well. Still, the buzz on the game is waaaaay positive.
Too bad I listed my Wii on eBay this past weekend.
April 15th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Wow… to all those bashing EA, I’d like to ask how many games you’ve been involved in publishing.
My programming experience is that you usually have fewer resources than you’d like, less time than you really need, and tremendous goals that you’re trying to accomplish.
Headtracking would’ve been a cool “easter egg”… but that’s all it was every going to be. Boom Blox will be essentially unchanged for 99.9% of people who were going to play it anyway, so it’s not surprising that (assuming something had to get cut to provide a smooth and polished experience) headtracking was the first to go.
Descoping a small novelty from a well-developed, Wii-exclusive game is hardly signs of the “evil empire” at work. It doesn’t make EA any less cool, and it doesn’t mean they are shortchanging the Wii community. Get a grip already.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
It probably just wasn’t worth putting the extra resources into something that I doubt even 5% of the buyers would know what to do with. It would have been cool, but I doubt i’d have bothered if it were there.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
@rdaneel72
It was already in the game. If anything they’re wasting their spent money by taking out something that was alreadyd developed.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
@ ejamer
Read the comments on the same article on Joystiq. Out of 25, 9 people (myself included) basically said it was a lost sale for them. I don’t care who you are, for a game with as little mainstream mindshare as this game, those comments mean something to the market this game can reach. That’s potentially 40% of their market lost right there.
Seen as the game is experimental and pushes a heavy novelty factor, any feature that might extend it’s audience is probably worth the miniscule modicum of effort required to implement. Particularly since it seems they’re ‘un-implementing’ the feature, and that, as someone pointed out, a Carnegie Melon student working on reverse engineered Wii-remote code invented and implemented the system in a few weeks for free, then released the program with source, and applauded the industry for implementing the idea, stating he was more interested in the advanced technology reaching the people than pursuing a royalty.
Descoping a novelty feature that made a little known game hit the cover of all the blogs is retarded. After the recent EA fiascos regarding shit rip off Wii itterations of various games, coupled with many a historical “we believe Nintendo will be out out of the hardware market within 5 years” comment and ‘Wii under review’ intonations, I think it’s fair to say that, yeah, EA shortchange the Nintendo Community in general.
April 15th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
WAAAAAAAAT the fuck! I was totally gonna buy that game just for that, too.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I’m really surprised at the strong opposition on this matter… Honestly, Boom Blox sounds pretty interesting as a game on its own. I agree that if this head tracking thing had never been announced or been an issue, we would most likely be hearing a lot of positive feedback on the game at this point in time. I think it sounds interesting, anyway.
That being said… I’ve never been a huge fan of EA myself. Although, I’m fairly biased because when I think of EA, I think of their horrid nasty army of sports games, and that makes me cringe. They have to make a BUNDLE from all the stupid little games they release, so they don’t really HAVE to try any harder to make what I consider more quality games. So… I guess from a company standpoint, they’re accomplishing what they’re trying to… But I still say nay.