It isn’t clear why here. I presume performance, in which case drop some polygons, reduce some particles, limit lighting bounces. It’s an RPG - gfx are secondary!
I’ll bet bandwidth more. Dynamic loading of assets isn’t an old technique - it’s ancient, but the more detailed everything becomes, the harder it is. Some of the textures are incredibly large in modern games dev now too. But shipping lower res versions can be prohibitive also with SSD space at a premium.
But essentially if you want to target the current generation. Build it for the S first!
Split screen open world games effectively have to be able to run two copies of the game at the same time. This isn’t a traditional split screen coop where two players are always within one “level” together, and thus all the game code can run just once for that “level”. All the physics, ai, memory, textures, all thr subsystems are running just once.
If two people can be on oppsite ends of a world, that’s two totally different sets of physics, ai, memory, textures. Everything has to happen, twice.
Basically, believe the smart person who made the game instead of dreaming up reasons you think they are wrong when they literally made the game and told you the problem.
Wow, I’ve never had such a condescending reply - even on Reddit!
The article is clearly lacking in details like you described. But did you know that we used to have open world RPGs like Balders Gate 2 run on what are now potatoes?
Here’s another hint. World state will be measured in 100s of MB. Twice means there’s still loads of gigs left to play with. The S has loads of CPU too. This will be almost entirely a look problem
You think split screen is new? You think this hasn’t been done before? You think this is the first generation of consoles to bitch about one of them?
Whinging about the S is a small brain reply to Microsoft who aren’t willing to compromise. And good for them. There is plenty of hardware in an S and devs if they want to sell more need to target it first. No use crying about a design decisions made years ago wrt the hardware envelope. Drop some shit, make it work, run some flamecharts, optimise some more
surprised how successful this was since it barely got a mention all the time it was in early access so thought it would have a relatively mild release but no the g*mers heard bear sex and everyone flooded in to buy it.
I think it’s more so that “bear sex” was just joke-worthy enough that people talked about the game that otherwise wouldn’t talk about it and news of the game spread beyond its usual corners of the internet. So more people heard of the game and I guess the openness that “bear sex” entails is pretty appealing for a CRPG.
Could it be that the hard core Baldur’s Gate fans are OG/serious Gamers and have learned to not pre-order? BG 1 & 2 were released way before gaming was mainstream. Most of the casual gamers probably only care about BG3 due to hype from other gamers who would also be “Never Pre-order” folk.
My wife found out BG was out. Saw it was a full release price and was kind of like, "meh I can wait". I joked about everyone playing just wanted to edit their character's genitals and she immediately put it on top of her Wishlist.
Completely agree. Remember when people lost their shit over horse armor in Oblivion? That would be seen as reasonable now. They just kept forcing these things until it was normalized, and now we’ve had an entire generation grow up with MTX as the norm.
It was interesting how quickly people fell in line with finding paying for online multiplayer normal too on the console side. Although some do try to hand wave it away by saying they aren’t paying for online, but to subscribe to game rentals.
But, yeah lot of these things people complain about eventually become the norm, and those who complain about it get seen as cranky entitled gamers over the long run.
Games that sell things like XP boosts always swear the game is balanced around not requiring them but there is always some grindy shit. Just play all this boring filler content for 90 hours.
I'll agree with that. Guild Wars 2 still has a slight amount of "pay for convenience" stuff that makes me twinge considering how much I've already paid for the games and expansions, and I really wish you could unlock mount skins in more ways than just gems, but considering you can farm gold and swap it for gems it's acceptable enough.
Especially because I wouldn't even play an MMO with a sub fee, so for that alone I respect GW2's approach.
For full price games on release? No, they really aren't.
People always says "cosmetics are fine". They aren't. Cosmetics are gameplay. Humans love looking cool. They NEED it a lot of the time. The entire fashion industry wouldn't exist if looking cool wasn't a major part of human psyche. These MTX wouldn't sell if it wasn't. Locking all or most of the interesting looks behind additional paywalls is bullshit. And it's not OK. I don't engage with games that do that. There's plenty to play that don't abuse their customers.
Some microtransactions are fine for free-to-play games and MMOs; I don't really like seeing them in full-priced games, especially if I feel it's engineered in a way to make me pay to play. It's why I avoid mobile games in general, playing them feels very predatory.
They could turn the Xboxss into a streaming console, some games aren’t available on it but you can stream those games if you want for a cost of course.
It’s a big middle finger to people who bought the xboxss, but they are gonna need to get their cloud streaming numbers up to justify the expense at some point, and people are too addicted to the ms office subsidized gamepass service to switch to anything else, as long as it stays cheap.
I don't know, you may as well say the same thing about the Switch and every port it gets. The S has its strengths and shockingly few weaknesses given those strengths.
The switch is a handheld and the ports it gets are for that reason. It wouldn't have sold enough to get basically anything third party if it was the same device without portability (see BOTW as a system seller when it literally already existed), and it still doesn't really get that many current gen demanding ports.
The fact that there's a worse Xbox you're required to support when the Xbox already lacks some of the asset loading tricks of the PS5 and has less units sold on top of it isn't something developers can just ignore. BG3 really isn't all that demanding for a next gen open world game, and compromising your vision to force it onto a worse console isn't something people want to do.
The Xbox Series S is a cheap lower-resolution Xbox, and the ports it gets are for that reason. The parity scales well for most games and reduces consumer confusion.
BG3 really isn't all that demanding for a next gen open world game
Most games these days, regrettably, don't bother with split-screen multiplayer, and definitely not with the worst-case scenarios of how far apart the two players can be in that world, which is their hurdle right now.
Parity here isn't on a scale. It's a binary trait. Either they are the same or one is worse than the other. The shitty XBOX does not have CPU parity with the real one, and it's a serious limitation that effectively means that the "good" Xbox also has that worse CPU in terms of game design. It will obviously still get some games, but it's losing games that it would otherwise get because it has nothing in common with a next gen system.
Split screen being the specific thing that BG3 is struggling to do isn't the point. It's merely a symptom. For a next gen open world game, split screen BG3 is still not that demanding. The fact that all the real action is turn based makes it far easier to make run than a similarly dense real time game with real time physics demands, and the fact that the Xbox S can't handle it is a very strong example that it's a piece of shit.
Microsoft wouldn't have nearly the install base without the Series S, and developers can either target that platform or not, just like the Switch, because people bought it for its own strengths. If they want to scale their games up to a spec such that it runs on PlayStation but not Xbox, they're welcome to, but they lose access to a large pool of customers, like those who can stomach paying $300 for a console but not $500. There are plenty of other next gen open world games that work on Xbox.
Also, your analysis on how it should perform isn't really based in reality. We can go to interviews where the Swen Vincke calls out the way their game does split-screen specifically. And besides, at this point, Xbox engineers are involved, and BG3 will run on Xbox, though likely just next year.
It has no strengths, and the install base is shit.
The switch only gets away with being a last gen console because it's a handheld. The Series S has all the performance benefits of a last gen console with the install base of one that released 5 minutes ago.
There is no "the way they do split screen". BG3 while running split screen is not a game that should make a current gen console struggle in any way. It makes the S struggle because it's not a current gen worth of hardware.
Its not the CPU that is the issue anyway. Its the memory both size and bandwidth. Microsoft addressed the size somewhat by making some more RAM available but that doesn't address the bandwidth. The issue is developers are hitting limits in shifting assets around as compared to the X. Its why you see significant texture differences and skipped RT in titles.
I don't have a crystal ball for how it will play out in the second half of the generation but you would have to think it is more likely to become a bigger issue than not. Its also imho another reason why there won't be a Pro series console. More likely they sunset the generation faster instead and just go with a whole new generation that trumps the PS5 pro. Because at least they know that the existence of a PS5 pro extends out the Sony generation enough to give them a window to do this. Or, and this would be a massive shame, this is the last Xbox hardware generation. I don't think its likely but maybe enough generations of trailing marketshare means the bean counters give up on that aspect of it.
We already saw through court documents that Pro-or-similar consoles are expected. The difference with Microsoft is if they stick to generations like they implied they wouldn't. You could get creative with you how you count Xbox consoles and say, "Here's the Xbox 6X and Xbox 6S", where 6 is a larger number than the PlayStation's 5, which we know is a strategy that works. Out of the gate, very few games would require that larger hardware, and unlike PlayStation, purchasing an Xbox game once gets you the upgraded version on new hardware. I imagined this is the direction they were headed in when this generation was designed, but 2020 sure did change the trajectory of all sorts of things even if I'm right. I also seriously doubt they're interested in leaving the console space given the acquisitions they've made in the past few years.
maybe enough generations of trailing marketshare
The 360/PS3 generation was extremely close, and they had the lead for most of it.
Yeah, the series s was a great decision in the short term, but was always going to create a lot of problems as the current generation progressed. Because while it kept consoles on shelves during the initial launch and chip shortage, and pulled in people who would ordinarily balk at the cost, the promise of next Gen support for the series s was always going to come back and bite Microsoft in the ass when more games started to push the consoles limits.
In this regard, Sony was way smarter in just extending the ps4 lifespan since developers can just drop it any time without the existing user base feeling like the got scammed since the ps4 never had promises of running concurrent to the ps5 like the series s does.
The industry can’t learn this lesson from their customers, because they didn’t get the bad idea from their market. It’s a society-wide trend, a symptom of a whole economy under the control of a narrow coproate elite that knows little to nothing about the industries they control or the products they produce. They contribute nothing to the productive process. They only work to streamline the parasitism that infests our society.
I have experienced this on the production end, as well. I used to work in pest control. For a brief period of my career, I was lucky enough to work for a midsized regional company, grown from a small family business, that was focused on solving actual customer problems. We did tons of one shot work. We did do quarterly and bimonthly service, but there was no particular pressure to subscribe, or to cajole customers who wanted to cancel service (because we’d successfully dealt with the problem) into continuing service.
Then the elderly couple that owned the company sold us to a global megaconglomerate (one of the “Big Three”). Over the course of a year, our focus changed. “Recurring revenue” was now the watchword, which is a tough fit in an inherently seasonal industry. And the reason they do this, in pest control, in game development, in every industry that can potentially produce any kind of surplus wealth, is because the owners (“investors”) neither know nor care about any of the details of the industries they control. All they want is regular and ever-increasing revenues, in exchange for nothing at all. You can’t even say it’s in exchange for access to their savings, because though there is a little actual savings in the system, that’s chump change compared to the ever growing wealthy elite that controls our society and devours our productivity.
Beautifully written and entirely spot on. The question is whether we will do anything about it. We probably have 10-30 years before this elite will entrench themselves forever with some kind of robot police that truly can’t be overthrown. (And it’s not like anyone is rising up now, even though the power is clearly with the workers)
And then this elite will Habsburg-jaw themselves into oblivion and all that remains of humanity are machines built in the name of shareholder profits. What a sad way for things to end.
Or, alternatively, they’ll ruin the earth’s climate in their selfishness and greed and either find a way to leave the planet and abandon the plebs to die, or more likely, die right alongside us as the climate collapses and ecological disaster wipes out the human race.
I see a different future. The tendency of wealth to be drawn upwards as position comes to replace labor as the primary means of gaining wealth ultimately puts a cap on progress. It’s a soft cap, meaning it might happen sooner or happen later, but it will happen sooner or later. Eventually, the imbalance reaches a tipping point, where the slightest jolt to the system sends the entire thing crashing down. Maybe people get pissed enough that general rebellion breaks out. Maybe the population becomes sufficiently stressed and undernourished and, therefore, immunocompromised that a global pandemic goes well beyond COVID into Bubonic Plague territory. Maybe peoples faith in the system becomes so thoroughly damaged that law breaks down generally, forcing those ultra rich to devote so many resources to security the people providing the security become the new elite. Allowing “position” (in Classical Economic parlance, “Land”) to be in itself a source of private revenue sows the seeds of destruction for a progressing society.
Of course, once enough people die and enough capital is destroyed, society starts over again, going once again through an age where labor is in the drivers seat, until population and capital base recovers.
Earning revenue by caring for your customers and the industry takes strategic direction, time, money and effort, and the kind of effort needed is different between industries.
Earning revenue by sucking the living shit out of a company works (at least temporarily) for any industry and a multinational C-suite executive can employ it to any industry to give themselves the guise of success.
It’s like instead of cooking and following a recipe, just take all the ingredients and stick it into a blender and call the smoothie a meal. You’ll get sustenance but you ruined what made food interesting.
Isn’t the whole point of pest control to kill ‘em [the pests] dead? Like, to have recurring business from the same customer one would have to not actually solve their problem. Barring any reintroduction of pests with seasonality as you suggested, or otherwise.
BG3 is one of my favorite games, but there is nothing technologically groundbreaking about it. As hardware improves, studios often prefer to use the new leeway to neglect optimization, which is a nightmare scenario for consumers who are forced to upgrade endlessly for no reason. It’s understandable that smaller studios may need to make that sacrifice, but there should be SOME penalty for it or it will get out of hand. The series S parity requirements provides some small penalization that I hope continues for generations to come.
Something I’ve been saying since the beginning, nice that people are catching up…
FTA: “The Xbox Series S was cheaper, but lacked the horsepower of the more expensive Series X.”
It’s not just that, the Series S lacks the power of the PREVIOUS GEN Xbox One X. The RAM limitations makes it impossible for it to run backwards compatible titles with the Xbox One X enhancements. AND it doesn’t have the 4K Blu Ray drive present in both the Xbox One S and Xbox One X.
This is the first time a console developer has released a new machine less capable than equivalent machines in the prior generation. PS3’s switch to cell architecture springs to mind, which put game devs on their back feet trying to write code for it and made backwards compatibility impossible without including a PS2 in the case.
Sorry but I cannot agree with that take. The PS3 was difficult to develop for, sure, but it was immensely more capable than the PS2 architecture. See what naughty dog was able to produce on it in the last years of the console lifespan.
But I do agree that for developers, the PS3 was a step backwards in terms of ease of use and tooling. And luckily they fixed that by basing PS4 on PC architecture.
Yeah, that statement is so dumb. Even if it’s hugely successful, a game of this type is made for a niche audience. That niche audience does hate microtransactions but they’re in no way representative of the mainstream.
I think, with 700k concurrent players, we need to recognize cRPGs may not be as niche as we previously thought. However, your point stands: this isn’t going to hurt anyone’s revenue from MTX.
We also like games that ask players for feedback, then take it and test it in the game and improve the game with it if it works. As opposed to recycling the same ubisoft tower climbing + shallow collectible fetch quest-a-thon for the 100th time while wondering why people are getting bored and not buying the sequels.
How could you learn anything about what people think of microtransactions from the success of a game that doesn’t have them? If a beloved franchise added a sequel with microtransactions in it and that sequel tanked, then maybe you’d have a case. From the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 the most you could conclude is “people will still buy a game that doesn’t have microtransactions,” which is not particularly revelatory.
A bunch of AAA games that heavily feature microtransactions are smash hits and made millions of dollars. Sure, people complain about it, but they also purchase tons of them (may not be the same people, mind you). I’m pretty sure we can conclude that not all people hate microtransactions. Hell, publishers will look at Baldur’s Gate 3 and probably go “man, this game is good but if they put some paid cosmetics in there they could have made even more money.”
All 100% correct unfortunately. These companies put in micro transactions because they make a boatload of money off of them. End of story. Til that changes, they will continue to shoehorn them into games to sustain the unsustainable infinite growth/profit model. Until pissing us off costs them more than they gain from it, it ain’t gonna change.
Then fuck it. All the people who want microtransactions, or don’t care about the quality of the medium enough to stop engaging with shitty practices, can have them. There are plenty of developers making games that care enough about the things they make that I’ll be happy to buy from. We’ve reached a point where the big studios will spend three years and a quarter of a billion dollars putting out 7/10 games that look great in trailers and don’t function on PC that exist alongside solo devs who make the games that look at home on PS1 and offer a better experience than anything Blizzard has made in the last decade. Even if my wallet’s vote doesn’t matter to the big guys, it doesn’t have to as long as it’s enough to support people whose passion isn’t exploited to make a just barely par product.
Don’t get hyped, don’t preorder, don’t buy games until they’re fixed. You can’t change the industry but you don’t have to support it.
forbes.com
Aktywne