It's a good time to be a PC gamer, this is a good move for Square Enix. I really like how even games from decades ago are still playable and very affordable. There's a big market for quality single player RPGs as evidenced by the success of Baldurs Gate 3 and Persona 5 Royal.
Who would've thought that making your product more readily available would increase sales? That's so much more counterintuitive than "double down on NFTs and release schedules that require knowledge of calculus to figure out."
SE releases have been all over the place recently. Sometimes it’s PS exclusives, sometimes Nintendo exclusives, sometimes console exclusives, sometimes they release on PS and Nintendo but not Xbox…
I was an XOne user a few years back and it was exhausting. PC side it’s a bit better, except that their flagship series is locked on PS for who knows how long, and then locked on Epic Store for one more year.
As a potential customer, I didn’t feel exactly welcomed. I was interested in FFXVI, but didn’t have a PS5 (I still don’t). Now I don’t have the time to play long-ass games anymore, which means that by the time it will finally be released on PC, I won’t probably buy it.
I was someone who was willing to give them money, and they refused it time and time again. I’m sorry for their difficult situation, as Square has created some great games from my childhood that I will forever cherish (both as Square Soft and Square Enix), but let’s be honest, this is their fault.
I hope they follow through with this decision, though. I doubt I’ll be a customer, but maybe they’ll make some kids as happy as I was when I was their age and playing those old FF titles. People deserve to play those games without being told to buy two different consoles and/or wait an eternity and a half for exclusive deals to expire.
This is very true. And it’s interesting in that generally Ubisoft has been fine across all platforms. And yet Japanese companies seem to CRAVE exclusivity. Have they not seen franchises like Assasins creed and Far cry and thought. Yeah I want that money too?
Meanwhile Larian studio reminding everyone that a good way to make money and avoid layoffs is to be nimble and make good games.
Big Corps sees nimble and good studio making a good game, starts layoffs immediately.
The real murderers are the people that sell their studio to a big publisher. They immediately seal the fate of their teams. They will have layoffs eventually…
I love Larian and am ride or die with Swen et al. Have been ever since Divine Divinity was “we have Diablo at home” but ended up being a shockingly good (for its time) hybrid ARPG/CRPG.
But Larian are very much not the example of “how to do business”. Like Digital Extremes, they are a “legacy” studio that is INCREDIBLY lucky to have survived. Larian themselves had to deal with really shitty publisher deals (Beyond Divinity and I think also Divinity 2?) and games so bad it almost killed the studio (even Mortismal himself will acknowledge that Divinity 2 was a trash fire before the DLC… and was still a mess after). It was mostly “lucking out” and embracing Kickstarter before everyone hated it that saved them. And… Dragon Commander still got close.
And you know what has REALLY made them stable? That’s right. A deal with a major company to work on one of the most famous IPs in gaming (tabletop and video) history.
Larian are smart to try to maintain their size and not overly grow. But, like countless game devs have said and gotten shouted down for, they are far from “typical” and got REALLY lucky. Hell, Swen himself has mentioned the same in between the blurbs that outlets love to reference.
You forgot to mention they sold 30% stake of the company to the world‘s largest game conglomerate Tencent. They‘re also working on a supposedly much larger game than BG3 now and plan to release it within the next 4 years which means they will have to at least double their staff. Honestly, judging a developer entirely by a recent success isn‘t a good practice even when it‘s as massive as BG3. Most people who talk about Larian have a very warped impression. Even when their games are great recently, the tides can change rapidly in this industry.
Yeah did someone just run or interpret reports incorrectly? If a person subscribes to Game Pass and plays Hi Fi Rush for X months, I’d consider that a sale.
If they play it exclusively, sure. But people play tons of games on Gamepass. HiFi Rush and a dozen other games splitting that $15/month/account is a lot less rosy.
I’ve had Gamepass since the beginning, and since it was launched it I’ve bought maybe 1 or 2 Xbox games that weren’t on gamepass, whereas I used to average 2-3 a month. My overall spending on games has dropped massively since getting gamepass - especially on Xbox.
Just the fact that they played some minimum amount should tell them the game contributed to the subscriber’s enjoyment of Game Pass. Otherwise if they are both selling a game and giving it to Game Pass subscribers for free I’m not sure what they are expecting. Can’t have your cake and eat it too, but I’m sure they would like that.
Maybe they are hoping that Game Pass is like extended demos and will lead to more game sales. But there are too many new games all the time for most to hold my interest.
I think they expected more casual gamers to sign up for game pass while the more dedicated among us would still be buying new products.
Honestly, they’d probably be doing better if they didn’t put games on there day 1. Sony doesn’t put their biggest titles on PS+ at launch for a reason.
Halo and starfield had shit sales because we didn’t have to buy them. If they required people to buy the triple-A in-house titles at launch, the double-A stuff like HiFi Rush could still be released on gamepass day 1 as an incentive for people to subscribe.
As it stands, Starfield and Forza burned the money that should be used for HiFi Rush and Ori.
Absolutely agree, just recently instead of buying Manor Lords I just found a good deal on a month of Game Pass. I played it as much as I wanted (for now) for less than $10.
Hmmm it’s almost like Jim Ryan was on to something when he said gamepass wasn’t good for the industry and publishers didn’t like it during the antitrust trial with Microsoft.
It blows my fucking mind how stupid some people are just to be able to play the next rehashed bullshit CoD on gamepass instead of paying $70 a year for the same garbage.
If you ever wonder why gamers buy Playstation and not Xbox, here is your reason.
MS have no idea what they’re doing with gaming. There will be no The Last of Us or God of War coming from them. They don’t want to sell you games. They want to sell you GamePass. They don’t want you to have a great time. They want you to have a time that is just about acceptable enough to keep paying for it.
The only one of their games I’ve heard people get excited about is Hi-Fi Rush, and you can see here what they think of that. Clearly it didn’t maintain enough Monthly Active Users, or have a short enough Time To Purchase or whatever other bullshit mobile-era metric determines whether a studio lives or dies.
And this is WHY the smaller studios are on the chopping block and not core Bethesda.
Because smaller games that are incredibly solid don’t matter. What matters are AAA tentpoles. And Tango’s A/AA games were “lukewarm” at best. They had an AMAZING B/A game but fuck 'em. Same with Arkane Austin
And… probably same with Obsidian this fall (?) when their Elder Pillars game comes out and people decide it isn’t Skyrim so it is bad. Ignore that Pentiment was amazing or their long legacy as one of the best studios in CRPGs. People will just talk doom and gloom because it isn’t The Last Of Us.
Which will lead to MS continuing to try to be Sony rather than take advantage of the studios they actually have. And people will continue to talk about how they can’t compete with Sony because they don’t have a Horizon Zero Dawn.
I’ve been saying it ever since MS started buying every studio they could. They have an AMAZING roster and can basically dominate the market by “flooding” it with high production value “indie” games. But… people want their AAA tentpoles.
This is such a fanboy opinion. Sony killed basically their entire Japanese Development, had 13 GaaS in development at the same time and actively are holding back the standard of Cross Save. They give plenty of reasons to not be the ‘gamer’ console. Especially now when they are also beginning to drop games on gamepass.
Ironically we still know of more single player games coming to Xbox then games coming to Sony outside of Spider-Man Leaks.
Fallout is currently the hottest game on the market thanks to the Show on top of this.
This really fucking sucks but damn stop trying to use this as a way to promote your team
If anything, Nintendo is likely the company about to make lightning strike twice with the Switch successor due to be announced this year. Will be interesting to see what it’s like, but no matter the case, it is going to sell like hotcakes.
Sony’s Japan studio’s own library was always gimmicky games that were basically tech demos- Ape Escape was for the Dual Analog controller, LocoRoco for the PSP, Gravity Rush for the Vita, Knack to be a pack-in for the PS4, and games for VR, Move Eye toy, etc. In fact it’s kind of hard to find games they did on their own because they’ve always been mostly a support studio even going back to the PS1’s launch lineup, and they are continuing that. There have been several studios that make original games that started as part of Sony Japan that have been spun off into separate teams too.
I’m struggling to think of many studios Sony has closed. Sony London studios was similar to Japan- mostly just games to go with hardware gimmicks like the EyeToy, SingStar, and Wonderbook. It’s even harder to find studios that Sony has purchased and then closed or turned into a support studio- I guess you could count that Psygnosis was purchased and merged into London studios back in the 90’s, but considering they went 20 years between that merger and closing I doubt there were many Psygnosis devs left there.
A quick search pulls up PixelOpus, a tiny studio Sony formed from 9 college grads with a couple of industry veterans to lead them They released 2 small games and were closed last year.
I don’t mean to be too defensive of Sony- they did close one of their own studios and laid off ~900 people this year. But it’s not really a comparison to Microsoft who now has a long history of buying 3rd party studios, mismanaging them, and closing them.
I’m also confused about your comment about Xbox making more single player games than Sony. First of all… I would expect that to generally be true. It looks like Sony owns 21 studios while Microsoft had 40 as of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And while a lot hasn’t been announcedwith release dates, we know of a handful of single player games Sony has in the works- Horizon 3, TLOU3, Ghosts of Tsushima 2, and new IP’s from Bend, Housemarq, and BluePoint. Plus Wolverine, and you could argue whether Physint should count or not since that’s a partnership between Kojima and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. If you’re trying to imply that Sony is abandoning single-player games or something that’s pretty far from the truth.
Yes, I know that, but they haven’t done anything egregious in quite some time. Microsoft, Sony, Take-two, Embracer and Activision have been been making a lot worse headlines for the last few years now.
Honestly all these tech layoffs could really come bite back publishers and the big tech in the near future.
Theres a lot new talent for competitors to snatch and fraction of these developers might even form up new studios to make the next big thing.
Hi-Fi rush comes out of nowhere to massive critical acclaim just to be shut down anyway because Starfield sucked ass. Why people ever do business with these shitass publishers I’ll never understand
Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a “guarantee” and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.
The major publishers are at least a paycheck that can keep a studio going for another year or two.
Because the indie space is also a graveyard. Investors are increasingly wary of funding anything but a “guarantee” and plenty of studios have had to shutter because the funding they were promised was rescinded.
Maybe gaming has become too bloated as a concept if no company can ever produce a product with their own money any more, instead always listening entirely to investor cash.
So… only independently wealthy people should make games?
Game dev takes time. The way you shrink that time is to do it full time instead of working on it in your spare time for a decade or so. Because of increased cost of living, the ability to just take a few months off and burn your savings is increasingly not viable.
That is where investors come in. Whether it is a kickstarter campaign (NEVER PRE-ORDER!! RAWR!!!), a venture capitalist, or a major publisher. And all of those have consequences.
But, increasingly, it is only the major publishers who are even trying. And they are increasingly selective of who they try it with. NoClip have been making an indie game as a way to better understand the market and they have a SPECTACULAR video where Danny O’Dwyer talks about his experience pitching the game to publishers and what kinds of responses they get. And it is really telling that he gushes over how nice one publisher (I think it was Humble?) were in that they actually responded and said they couldn’t move forward rather than just ghosting him.
Sure but that’s only a piece of the puzzle. Housing, food, and general living costs are so insane now that any decent savings would be obliterated much more quickly. UBI would be a better solution here, but that’s almost a pipedream at this point.
Um I disagree. The biggest barrier is having the capital to do the thing. I think a number of states have a reduced/free option if your income is below the poverty line (calculated as having low or negative income in the startup phase, not necessarily based on assets), or being lucky enough to have a spouse with healthcare. That said, it’s entirely doable to go without healthcare, albeit risky. I started a contracting company 3 years ago with almost no money and the tools I had from my apprentice/jman years, and still don’t have health insurance, though I’m hoping to get some later this year.
Taking a look at big-cash high profile releases like Redfall and Starfield…is “guaranteed failure” what they’re going for? Because those indie games were pretty much the main reason I kept subscribing to game pass.
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Aktywne