Gaming Which company has influenced the industry the most?

[James]

[color=#811C3A]I agree with you about GTA. In a world where games are making less profit, more and more companies seem to be turning to the GTA model.

In some ways I think it's good, in some ways it's bad. It is kind of annoying when every developer out there jumps on a particular trend. But having said that, some developers have apparently applied some of those principles in their own games very well (ie: Jak 3).

I think you can't help but play a game like San Andreas and realize that, like it or not, the game makes some pretty significant achievements.

Funny thing is, GTA isn't the first game to actually try to create these types of open-ended worlds. Does anyone remember a game on N64 called Body Harvest? It was also created by Rockstar North (who were known as DMA Design at the time). If you go back and play that game, you'll find that it's almost really like the "first 3D GTA" -- different story and setting and everything, but it maintains the open ended world concept and it contains cars that you can hijack and so on. I remember how fresh and interesting it felt when I first played it, but it definitely wasn't as interesting as GTA. The older N64 hardware didn't allow for bustling cities and generally busy environments. Instead, the worlds in Body Harvest were basically deserted and you only faced off against large aliens now and then.

The deserted nature of the worlds really suited the game; it even added to atmosphere. However, it just wasn't as fun or interesting as GTA. Still, I think it shows that even at that stage, DMA/Rockstar were really thinking about that type of gameplay. You get the sense that they felt it really wasn't possible until the current generation. It's one of the few styles of games where you feel that it just wasn't something that could be done on a 32/64-bit machine.

So yeah, I think that Rockstar North is a good choice to add to the list.

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[natetron46]

Why would anyone vote for Microsoft in the poll? Given the other companies present, what ahve they done that is so good to deserve them of this honor?