
Duke Nukem Forever finally available for pre-order on Amazon - tswicegood
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=duke+nukem+forever&x=11&y=17
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code_duck
Ha! I know someone who pre-ordered it like 8 years ago. Not falling for that
this time.

~~~
moondowner
I wonder whether this guy's pre-order will be approved :)

[http://obnoxiousgamer.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/duke-
nukem...](http://obnoxiousgamer.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/duke-nukem-pre-
order-receipt.png)

~~~
potatolicious
It would be in GameStop's best interests to do so.

After all, he's still on the hook for all but $10 of the purchase price. If I
were GameStop I'd get a camera crew together and make this some good press for
a $10 "loss".

Marketing like this doesn't get cheaper than $10.

~~~
patio11
If corporate America had any sense, they'd spend one fiftieth of their next ad
buy, send a camera crew and the product lead out to his house, and give him
"the first copy" signed by the dev team to play on his brand new Duke Nukem
AlienWare computer.

Sadly, finding this sort of initiative in corporate America is rather
difficult... which is why folks like e.g. Airbnb eat their PR/marketing lunch.

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nikcub
Customers who bought this also bought: Half Life 2: Episode Three, Vista with
WinFS, TextMate 2.0, Daikatana and a Crunchpad

~~~
ido
Interestingly enough, Daikatana's 3 years development time is not considered
out of the ordinary for AAA games these days.

~~~
cynic
Except that Daikatana was never particularly revered as a triple-A game, so
far as I can remember! ;-)

~~~
ido
Wikipedia said it sold 200k units and payed for its development, so it's not
the terrible failure people seem to tout it as either :)

I wonder how much DNF will have to sell to pay back its development costs?

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robyates
Wired has a really good article from last year about why DNF was never
finished: <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/>

Executive summary: The first game was _too_ successful. Failure can be, and
often is, a good thing.

" _Normally, game developers don’t have much cash. Like rock bands seeking a
label to help pay for the cost of recording an album, game developers usually
find a publisher to give them an advance in exchange for a big slice of the
profits. But Broussard and Miller didn’t need to do this. 3D Realms was flush
with cash. [...] Yet the truth is, Broussard’s financial freedom had cut him
off from all discipline. He could delay making the tough calls, seemingly
forever. One day, Broussard came in and said, ‘We could go another five years
without shipping a game’ because 3D Realms still had so much money in the
bank_ "

~~~
robyates
Another lesson to be learned is: shipping is a feature.

 _“George’s genius was realizing where games were going and taking it to the
next level,” says Paul Schuytema, who worked for Broussard and Miller heading
up the development of Prey, another 3D Realms title. “That was his sword and
his Achilles’ heel. He’d rather throw himself on his sword and kill himself
than have the game be bad._

 _Broussard simply couldn’t tolerate the idea of Duke Nukem Forever coming out
with anything other than the latest and greatest technology and awe-inspiring
gameplay. He didn’t just want it to be good. It had to surpass every other
game that had ever existed, the same way the original Duke Nukem 3D had.

But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill.
He’d see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be
incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. “One day George started pushing for snow
levels,” recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several
years starting in 2000. Why? “He had seen The Thing” — a new game based on the
horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — “and he wanted
it.” The staff developed a running joke: If a new title comes out, don’t let
George see it. When the influential shoot-’em-up Half-Life debuted in 1998, it
opened with a famously interactive narrative sequence in which the player
begins his workday in a laboratory, overhearing a coworker’s conversation that
slowly sets a mood of dread. The day after Broussard played it, an employee
told me, the cofounder walked into the office saying, “Oh my God, we have to
have that in Duke Nukem Forever.”_

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checoivan
Very appropriately launched on Dec 28th, the Latin version of April's fools.

I think I'll wait for retail :)

~~~
electromagnetic
Ditto, I'm not even going to believe it when I'm holding a disc in my hand
loading it into a drive. I'll believe it when I'm halfway through (what by now
should be the first FPS to break the 10+ hour mark, really it should be
breaking the 100+ hour mark) and it wasn't a half-complete last-ditch scam to
keep the project alive and funded.

I'm serious, until that point I believe DN:F is fake. This wouldn't be the
first time a retailer is hosting pre-order before the game actually has a
release date set.

~~~
jerf
As long as we're having a bit of fun, here's Yahtzee's "review" of DNF, which
your post reminded me of:

[http://hawtymcbloggy.com/2010/09/01/zero-punctuation-
viewers...](http://hawtymcbloggy.com/2010/09/01/zero-punctuation-viewers-
choice-duke-nukem-forever/)

I have linked to someone embedding the video because as of this writing the
Escapist magazine appears to be down. It ought to be living at
[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-
punctuation...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-
punctuation/748-Duke-Nukem-Forever) .

For the record, this "review" dates from shortly after the cancellation was
announced and quite a bit before the current company picked it up, so when it
refers to the game being released it was being very "review"y.

------
Swizec
They have ruined everything! Suddenly "I'll get a date when DNF comes out"
lost all its meaning.

~~~
frb
DNF was a synonym for vaporware. I even always used DNF to explain to people
what vaporware is. What now?

~~~
kenjackson
iPhone on Verizon.

~~~
albemuth
white iphone

~~~
kenjackson
Much better. Thank you.

------
jessevondoom
I'd actually consider paying the pre-order fee to keep it in a perpetual state
of pre-order. Goes from epic vaporware to a whole new vapor-based business
model.

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jammur
So pumped Textmate 2 is finally coming out. I was just about to switch to vim
too.

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mistrQ
I read this and thought TextMate 2 was out for some reason :)

~~~
jseliger
Funny -- there was just a thread on the Mac Ach at Ars Technica on this
subject:
[http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=113190...](http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1131909)
, and the top post says:

 _So remember the Duke Nuke'em Forever jokes back in summer 2008!. It's now
nearly 2011. Still not even a rumor of a beta. Will this product ever be
released?_

Another person said:

 _I really think it's sill in development. I mailed him few days ago to still
encourage him to develop TM2. I had a reply from the support guy, containing
“hope we can live up to your expectations"_

Of course, my expectations are that Textmate 2 will never come out, so I hope
they don't live up to expectations in my case. But those expectations are easy
to exceed.

~~~
mistrQ
TM2 is a lost cause.

I'm banking on Coda 2 now!

~~~
guywithabike
You, sir, are a master of nuanced satire. Kudos.

------
lionhearted
I don't even play video games any more, but if it's reviewed as any good at
all, then I'd be tempted to buy a copy and waste a weekend playing it.

...hmm, maybe this is how all those luxury nostalgia business models work like
$200 Barbies...

------
InfinityX0
This is the first video game to have a "movie" appeal. Fans of other cross-
media formats, such as comic books, often will watch the movie simply because
they were a fan of the series - even if the consensus is that the crossover is
absolutely and completely terrible, and also hear as much from their most
trusted referrals (see: Daredevil).

Because of the aging of this game and the story behind it, this sequel has
taken on a similar quality - showing that maybe the thing that creates the
appeal isn't the media format presented, but rather, the duration of time
between one notable appearance and the next.

------
SideSwipe
Watch, they'll cancel orders last minute and say thanks for helping fund the
sequel, "Duke Nukem Never".

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tomdeal
Is anyone expecting more than a mediocre game?

~~~
potatolicious
I played it at PAX. It will be mediocre by objective standards - the graphics
are nothing to really admire at, and the gameplay is the same old FPS gameplay
we've been used to for the last N years.

But the game _is_ gut-bustingly funny, crude, and blatantly offensive in the
way only Duke can. In that sense, I'm fairly confident about it.

------
coderdude
It's just not the same. It's a game by the same name, but this isn't the DNF
that we were waiting for: The possibly end-all be-all of games because it took
so long to develop.

~~~
bayleo
I was initially skeptical when Gearbox announced that they were releasing it
(I figured they had just scrapped most of what was there and built their own
game), but apparently 9 ex-3D realms employees formed their own micro-studio
(Triptych) and continued development from their homes until they could muster
support from Gearbox to help polish and build the console ports. So far
Gearbox/2K has also done a great job of marketing so they will probably see a
nice ROI for saving DNF.

~~~
trotsky
So it's still developed for the PC and ported to the consoles instead of the
other way around? GBX's shoddy pc port of that RPG shooter makes me wary...

~~~
CrazedGeek
Borderlands? Seems to be a solid port to me.

------
alanh
I love that Amazon lists the PC version as coming out for “Windows 7/XP.” So
telling! I don’t think there’s really an analogy to make. Vista was a failure
beyond comparison.

~~~
frou_dh
7 IS Vista, hastily rebranded and tweaked a bit.

~~~
alanh
Hard to disagree. But it sure ain't priced like a service pack!

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paines
Together with GNU Hurd, ON ONE BLUERAY!! BAAAAAAEEEMMM!!!!

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EGF
I think it would have been great if they allowed pre-orders 5 years ago too. I
could have sworn I heard of this happening but perhaps not.

~~~
mortenjorck
Try GameStop, nine years ago.

[http://www.bravenewgamer.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/01/SZ9e...](http://www.bravenewgamer.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/01/SZ9e3.png)

~~~
EGF
Amazing - thank you!

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joejohnson
Is this game going to be available for Wii?

~~~
iwwr
Oh, I can think of wiimote minigames that won't stand very well with Nintendo
:)

~~~
knieveltech
Shake it, baby.

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bradgessler
Seriously, is this a joke?

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mkramlich
if there was ever one product I would not risk "pre-ordering" ...

