I could almost see the "digital foundry can't share it" as not giving their review outlets preferential treatment over everyone else (because the technical breakdown is a separate thing), but the timeline is just not anywhere near sufficient, especially for a game of this scope.
I understand that Beth delayed the review codes, but I don’t quite understand why. The subtext of this article seems to suggest that they expect higher reviews from other outlets. Is that the case?
I'm kind of reading it like the Europe team did kind of a shitty job, considering they said some places got codes from the American team.
It's generally a hard balance to strike on when it's good enough for reviewers to get their hands on it with enough time to actually provide meaningful evaluations (because they genuinely are fixing shit up to and through launch. This is the same reason it's hard for reviews to provide a lot of information on general bugginess. They also play a lot of unfinished stuff that's actually cleaned up before launch). But there's no reason to give different reviewers codes at different times. It sounds like different divisions and one fucking up.
I get the sentiment. But to me personally, “redundancy” is pretty clear and doesn’t mask the pain that comes with being let go. There’s also generally a difference between being “fired” and being “made redundant”. Redundancy suggests that their job doesn’t need to be done anymore b/c of a restructure, bankruptcy, merger, and the company needs to meet certain obligations for that redundancy not to be considered an “unfair dismissal”.
It’s not the same thing so I’m not sure why you’re taking umbrage with commonly use and understood vocabulary. Being fired means there was a fault on the employees’ part, which isn’t true.
I feel like we’re maybe getting confused about terminology here? “Redundancy” is a specific term for a specific form of dismissal. It’s not a euphemism for “firing” because firing someone is a different kind of dismissal. Terms like rightsizing, reset, re-allocating resources, trimming the fat – these are certainly euphemisms for redundancy that should be called out.
That distinction means jack shit to the people that are “made redundant” and everything to the people that have an interest in marketing this as anything other than someone losing their job.
The article states the layoffs will affect the UK division and EU division, I am assuming you are basing your statement on US laws. www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights/notice-periods states that you will get paid for X number of weeks depending on how long you have been in your job.
Redundancy is very different to being fired though. When you’re fired you just lose your job and that’s it. If you get made redundant, you lose your job but get paid X amount of months worth of wages to make up for the fact you may be jobless for a while, while you look for a new one. X being different depending on both the countries laws and the company’s policies. But usually it increases the longer you’ve been with the company.
They can't raise the price too much, or people quickly find out that it's cheaper to just buy the games outright. Their sweet spot seems to have stuck right at 1/4th the price of a new AAA game per month. Believe me, I was surprised to find out from all kinds of failed products and services over the past few years that people can actually do math.
If you ask me, I'd say that's exactly why they won't rise further, or much further. They're measuring all of this before and after they take action, and if the price increase sees a trend line go in the wrong direction, it'll be a while before they bump it again. I wasn't angry at Netflix for raising their prices such that you could call it a backlash; it just became too expensive to justify having it around when there isn't anything I know I want to watch on it.
Netflix also made a killing by creating the ad-supported tier, because the ads more than cover the cost of lowering the subscription. My folks pay for Netflix with ads but you can block them with a DNS sink like AdGuard or a Pi-Hole.
I think it’s a scam honestly. Netflix’s library has shrunk with all the other streaming services coming into the market. It was convenient when it was the only game in town but now it’s just one of a dozen services feeling more like cable than streaming.
I just saw an article where Apple TV+ was going to bundle with Paramount+ for a lower rate.
It makes 3 Billy a year according to them. Sounds like a tidy profit but you’re probably right that hikes will continue, especially if they start getting some better games out at a better cadence.
Probably just less experienced writers that can be paid less and pushed around more. Thus leading to the continual quality reduction of all modern media.
It kind of is, now that I’m thinking about it. It has vehicle sections, tight quarters on-foot sections, big weapons, snipers… It has a sampling of just about everything.
This is such a weird take because Cyberpunk's storytelling was a series of Grand Theft Auto phone calls occasionally interspersed with "UR DYING V, I'M KEANU REEVES AND IM GONNA TAKE UR BODY LOL". There wasn't anything interesting about Cyberpunk's storytelling. I believe a Bethesda game could be more boring than that, but it doesn't retroactively make Cyberpunk great as a result.
It blows my mind that people praise cyberpunk. They skipped straight past the character building and introduction to the city and its characters with a fucking 30 second cutscene, and then you just start getting calls from people you’ve never met like they know you. It didn’t interest me at all.
Ah so they didn’t just blow past the city and character introductions with a cutscene and then you start getting calls from fixers you don’t know, who talk to you like you have an existing relationship?
Tell me more about the incredible storyline that introduced you to the city and its inhabitants at the start
Mine was “car chase for a lizard” then the guy I just met dies, who was apparently my best friend because we played 2 missions together
V, someone in their twenties, maybe early thirties, had no life, friends, or business acquaintances or knowledge of the city before the player comes into the story.
I suppose the game should have been 25 hours longer so you could have a sit down meeting with each fixer, get to know them, maybe have some tea with them. Maybe a walking tour of Night City so that everything is spelled out for you would help?
People spent 8 years making Cyberpunk their entire personality. Of course they are going to make it seem like the best thing since stuffed crust pizza.
Ah not liking something makes me the bad guy because apparently it’s my whole personality.
Nope. Just talking about something in the thread where there’s a discussion about it. Happens to be I agree with many others that it was an overhead disappointment propped up by marketing money.
Felt the same way about it. The plot device of the character potentially becoming Keanu really broke all motivation for me. Why would I complete the main plot if each mission made the infestation worse? I made this character, why would I be interested in watching them become someone else’s Gary Stue? I wanted to be my Gary, not theirs.
The story would have been much improved by dropping Johnny Mnemonic Silverhands and instead having the partner, whose name escapes me because I only got to know him through 2 missions and a 30 second montage of us getting to know each other, as the ride along personality. Instead of him taking you over, he’s fading away and you have to save him.
Throw in a heroic sacrifice from your semi AI partner at the end or a plot twist him into a villain Tyler Durdening your ass while you sleep and it could have been something magical.
The theme of cyberpunk is that you have a literal anti corp terrorist in your head, and how that is affecting V’s psyche. Like there are points in the game where you choose some dialogue options and the game is like “is that V’s opinion or Johnny’s”.
I think they should have not played up the “if left unchecked, he’s going to kill you” sense of urgency bit though. But basically every open world game has the same problem with how do you reconcile having an open world, but also have a plot that needs moved forward. Like they can’t just outright game over you if you just do side quests for a in-game week or so.
That’s where starfield actually gets it right. You aren’t the “chosen one”, you are just a guy. The main plot of the game has no sense of urgency, because it’s fully driven by how much you dig into the artifact mystery. Any one in constellation could be doing the same things you are doing, and getting the powers and finding more artifacts, they all have seen the same visions you have when they first touched one. Again, you aren’t special.
When you work on something for longer than 5 years, the tech and expectations from competing games will run ahead of you.
And you can’t just rewrite the story and engine and map and characters every time you get delayed.
So you should just shoot every AAA project that lags more than 5 years on the spot. It’s way too late for it at that time. And start from market analysis, not just rewriting everything in the ‘current engine and style’.
In case anyone didn’t want to open the article, the feature is improved image quality due to AMD’s FSR2 on PlayStation being used over 2x MSAA on Xbox.
There’s also a slightly different gamma on PlayStation, combined with the different anti-alliasing it results in cleaner looking frames. The article has side by side comparisons as well.
I don’t really understand the purpose of showing FSR2 vs FXAA/MSAA with still frames… FSR2 struggles most with motion and thin/dense high-contrast areas, none of which are showcased in the screenshots, so of course FSR2 is going to look better.
Companies NEVER care about their customers. They care about profit.
Sometimes, it is profitable to be considerate of the consumers, but when customers are willing to give a company money despite their bad practices, they will always prioritize profit.
That’s the problem, if at least a part of us would start to punish companies, not with comments or bad reviews but with their actual wallet, and instead “reward” them for customer friendly behavior, the industry as a whole would be in a faaaaar better state.
I think maybe it requires legislation or a change in systems. It’s not really feasible to rely on millions of individual customers coming together to punish bad companies, it just doesn’t seem to happen effectively or make a significant impact.
Whatever it ends up being, I’m not interested. Never cared for competitive gaming. Sad that Valve has decided to use part of their enormous talent pool for, well, this while almost any genre would’ve been better.
Also, this is already a highly saturated niche. I don’t doubt Valve’s technical prowess and knowhow to develop a game that can surpass all the other ones in quality, but a gilded turd is still a turd under that gold leaf, even if it’s technically the best turd in the world.
That’s unfortunate that it’s not a genre you personally are interested in, but it is a popular genre and Valve is a business. Just because it’s not to your tastes doesn’t mean it’s a waste of their talent.
Oh absolutely. I’m not conceited enough to imagine Valve is developing games for me or that I’m entitled to anything. Just venting my personal disappointment with their choice. I still consider them the cream of the crop in game and hardware development.
I’m just curious why Valve looked at the oversaturated hero shooter market (seriously, we’ve had failures 8 years ago now) and said “Oh yeah, let’s devote our resources there”
edit: Like, I seriously can’t understand it. Not even Blizzard is coming out unscathed from Overwatch 2.
Not really my responsibility to make an argument for you. Of all the reasons Overwatch 2 might not have performed well, it being a Hero Shooter doesn’t have any strong evidence and you didn’t provide anything showing that was the reason.
One could argue Overwatch 2 being a Hero Shooter is why it didn’t perform worse than it already has, given its problems.
Blizzard is bad at balancing the game - could be true of any game, doesn’t have to be a shooter
Blizzard cancels promised mode - Blizzard being bad at design and following through on promises.
See 1.
Forcing a game to become the sequel, not making meaningful changes other than monetization
See 1
Blizzard made a bad game
None of these are a result of Overwatch 2 being a shooter, and all of them are a result of Blizzard being shit at making quality games, caring about players, and following through on promises. So thank you, you have done a fantastic job demonstrating that Overwatch 2 being a shooter is not the reason it didn’t perform well.
Competitive online games have been Valve‘s focus for well over a decade so it‘s in line with their portfolio. If anything, Alyx was an outlier they only did because they have a headset to sell it with. I think they know what they‘re doing. Sucks for you to not be their target audience though because they are pretty good at making games.
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