BlackLagoon

@rebgav said:

No, I don't think it's been revealed. I'd guess it's someone who can do a reasonable impression of the last guy for a lot less money.

According to IMDB (so, you know, imdb) the supporting cast is made up of Powers Boothe, Keith Carradine and a bunch of low-level tv actors. If they'd hired a name for 47 they would have led with that, you'd think. So far, the voice cast looks like a support group for actors with too much free time, so I don't know why anyone would think that Bateson was replaced with someone more well-known.

Sorry, but actors do not get paid based on your emotional attachment to their characters. Hollywood actors are the best paid ones in the industry, and Bateson got the role of 47 because IO chose the cheaper option of rounding up whatever English speaking actors they could find in Copenhagen and producing the voice acting themselves. David probably got a pay bump to Screen Actors Guild video game minimum when the voice acting moved to Los Angeles with Blood Money, but with Absolution being performance capture the minimum will undoubtedly be much higher, never mind the extra pay the new guy will be able to negotiate above that if he's a "name" actor.

As for the "supporting cast", I was thinking of the three officially announced so far - Powers Boothe, Keith Carradine and Marsha Thomason, all established actors with big credits. I expect 47's actor to be in line with them, most likely he's just not been announced because they don't want to draw attention to the "47 actor replaced" fan rage until they're ready to counter it with a big PR push near launch.

And the actors on IMDB seem mostly people who did incidental characters and background voices. They were most likely cast and recorded separately, and are pretty much irrelevant to this discussion.

@rebgav said:

Who is playing 47 now?

Exactly.

...that hasn't been revealed yet, has it? I'd guess it's someone with a lot of TV / Film credits, since the supporting cast include people from Dexter, Lost, 24, Sin City, etc.

@Red: I've been primarily using my Vita outside in the summer weather. Replicating that with my PS3 would at best be wildly impractical.

@Agent47: I'd guess they replaced him because they've moved to using Hollywood actors and full performance capture. The casting people there probably thought he was a nobody and not worth the effort of transporting to the states, and IO presumably agreed.

@Bane122 said:

Well, the fact that it's sales doubled due to P4 seems pretty good until you see that double only comes to 35K units, and that that was still about 30K less than the 3DS. I'm not saying Vita is doomed but, I'm not sure this is any kind of great sign.

It's far, far better than when the Vita was selling less than 10K, and puts the system in second place in Japan. Also, what's far more important to the Vita's long term health is that Persona 4 Golden itself sold over 137K copies, over twice what the second place title did. That's a clear indication that there's good money to be made putting out high quality Vita exclusives, without the need of a big marketing budget necessary to get noticed on more crowded platforms.

@Adaurin said:

I'm not really into CoD, but I can't wait to get my hands on Liberation, hopefully it will hold me over until AC3 is released on PC.

It's kinda interesting that the Vita's "great savior", Liberation, is being made by the same team that did Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, which was the real stand out among the 3DS launch titles. Sadly I believe Shadow Wars sold poorly, and ended its days as a bargain bin iPad release. Hopefully the Assassin's Creed name will allow Liberation to shine.

@hughesman said:

However according to http://www.m-create.com/ranking/ the release of persona 4 has just about doubled the vita's weekly sales in Japan.

It's also worth noting that this doubling came after the Vita received another substantial increase in sales due to the release of a Gundam game, so, yeah, if they get the right games out people will buy it. The fact that Persona 4 Golden topped the Japanese game chart should also help the Vita get more games, as it demonstrates that there is an audience out there willing to pay full price for high quality games, and right now there are few enough Vita games that none of them run much risk of getting buried.

@MikkaQ said:

You can't win with Sony's UI.

Unless of course you are entering the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards! :PPPPPPPPPP

@MikkaQ: The Vita does of course have it's own touch focused UI, I was just using the XMB as counterpoint to jonnyboy's seeming disdain for every Sony Console UI ever made, that that opinion was hardly universally shared. The PS4 will undobtedly have its own UI, and I don't really see the point in messing with the PS3 at this point. It seems when the Xbox has done that, it's been more to reflect corporate design (Metro) and marketing (Bing, Kinect, video streaming) priorities, rather than a provide a better experience for gamers and developers.

Yeah it is. It's an intense and suspenseful show, and for the most part has kept up the pressure constantly. They've already decided when it will end too, so it's unlikely they'll leave you hanging.