Huh, it’s almost like when you make the same game 12 times, force shitty DRM, and then outright disable access to content, people are not going to support your business.
Yeah, it is interesting that with the exception of GPUs, PC parts like SSDs, hard drives, CPUs, and so on actually have felt like they haven’t increased in price in comparison to phones. If anything prices have dropped and capacities increased and speeds gotten faster for SSDs for example. Same with televisions and monitors where stuff like resolution and hz has seen improvements while being cheaper than in the past.
To an extent, motherboards, too, and even before the GPU prices went ballistic. I bought a Z87 mobo back in the day for 80 or 90€ and the most expensive mobos were around 300€ or so. The X570 mobos in 2019 started at 250€ and 550 mobos didn't even get released until at the end of 3000 series Ryzen. Who in their right mind would pair a 200€ R5 3600 CPU with a 250€ mobo?
I bet most of the budget-minded people who bought a R5 3600 CPU never got to use PCIe 4.0. And to add insult to injury, budget GPU-s started using PCIe 4.0 x8 (or even x4) instead of x16, effectively gimping them on budget mobos.
The thing I always thought would be in the Switch’s benefit is if the dock itself also contained hardware. On the small handheld screen, the quality looks fine enough at lower resolutions, but then looks pretty bad when blown up on a 4K TV. If the dock had additional expandable hardware to boost performance when docked, that could go a long way to help it keep up.
That's actually kind of how the switch works. But it's not hardware in the dock, it's just the ability to draw more power when plugged in allows it to increase performance.
Remaster as in upscaled graphics and leaving the janky controls untouched and unoptimized?? Or as in a whole reimagining that bastardizes the source material?
Interestingly- I’ve found a few people not only think that there won’t be a new control scheme, they actually hope that they don’t add one. To their point, I guess the game would fall apart navigating the exact same environments with more responsive controls.
That'd be like playing Goldeneye 64 on a PC with mouse look. It'd be hilariously easy because all of the enemies are tuned to be handleable with the primitive control scheme.
Which one? I played the one that was released on Switch, which is just the OG and had the same controls. What do you mean recent? You mean the 2010 remake?
Oh wow, how's it hold up? I think the Xbox version of that 2010 remake came out in 2011, the original was a Wii game. I assume that means they made it backwards compatible.
That's a full on reimagining of the original game, new Bond and everything, so the balance wouldn't be comparable to playing the actual original with modern controls, but I heard it was a better game than you'd expect from messing with the original Goldeneye.
I was talking about the original Goldeneye 64 that came out on Switch's NSO N64 games.
The new world has to be pretty similar to the old, given that the article says that one can flip between the modern and original graphics.
Talking of nostalgia, all three games are being released with an option to switch between the original blocky polygon graphics, and lovely patched-over modern designs. If it’s anything like the Monkey Island remakes, this means I will spend the entire time obsessively switching back and forth, unable to cope without knowing how every scene looks in each incarnation.
So, like HaloCEA and Halo2 Aniversary. But these work fine because the originals already had decent geometry to work with. TR1-3 though ? The levels are basically cubes upon cubes. Not sure how they’ll make that work
The Halo remakes were shit because they made the “original” version look way worse than it actually was on the original Xbox. The main reason is a handful of clever texturing techniques for bump mapping that they didn’t bother replicating in the remake. The result was much flatter-looking textures.
As someone who used to really like Phil, I agree with this. He’s clearly banking on his popularity as a “celebrity” within the gaming community to put a smiling spin on what is a clearly horrible business record.
The question here is not whether Microsoft does the same things that all businesses do (i.e. be evil Capitalist monstrosities that run people’s livelihoods over in the name of investor greed)- that much is obvious.
The question is whether Phil Spencer is actively enabling this behavior and also covering for it- which he is.
And that is why, as the article suggests, people need to stop treating him as anything other than a corporate representative who wants to extract as much value as he can before it all runs into the ground.
What’s weird about the whole incident is that anyone with even the slightest knowledge of the PC gaming space could have told you that this is exactly what would happen.
I think the concept of “Pay what you want.” is a very friendly approach to this. It already exists on platforms like itch.io and some free to play games financed through donations, like Dwarf Fortress, also became extremely popular. Humble Bundles are also pretty famous for this. And of course kickstarters do something a bit similar to this.
Personally I’d love to see donation buttons/infos especially for all the free music and games that exist out there. But I want to make sure my donations reach the people who actually worked on it, so I dislike products like paypal or patreon where a portion of the money goes to men in the middle and their managers/owners, etc. A bank account number or something along those lines where I can transfer money a bit more directly would be nice, but some creators only provide paypal buttons, so I won’t donate.
He’s not talking about donations though, he’s talking about paying full price THEN tipping. It’s a blatant excuse to pay developers less while placing financial guilt on the people paying for the product. It’s the same way tipping at a restaurant works.
He’s not talking about donations though, he’s talking about paying full price THEN tipping.
I’m aware of that. The “Pay what you want.” concept mentioned in my first paragraph was its own idea/suggestion/thought, since it kinda fits the topic. It’s a different thing.
It’s a blatant excuse to pay developers less while placing financial guilt on the people paying for the product. It’s the same way tipping at a restaurant works.
Not really, really good video games take months or even years to complete, so your developers will want to be paid for that time before they become profitable. At restaurants the initial investment isn’t quite as high, as far as wages are concerned. I’d argue that you get tipped before even getting your first monthly paycheck. That can not be the case for video game tips.
I assume software developers and other people in the IT sector are also in higher demand than waiters, so they don’t have it quite as bad as waiters. That’s why I think they’re not comparable.
That said, I do believe that a company that is open about the tips it receives could be interesting for developers. If I saw that tips were actually split evenly among all the employees and their work hours then I think it’d be worth considering applying there. Though I guess for fairness those tips should even be paid out if employees quit or get kicked out so you’d have to track how much each person contributed to each product and that could be a bit of a bureaucratic hassle.
The dorf fort devs made like $3k-6k per month throughout the 2010s. They did end up going commercial to get more. But it was hardly “not even a little profitable.” I mean, I’d take that deal to do what I love too.
I’m aware of that and also see the problem, but argue that that’s partially because most people just aren’t used to this. People’s actions depend a lot on what they consider the norm. Take waiters or other service people as an example - in some cultures it’s usual to tip them, in others it’s unusual or even frowned upon.
You would have to at least have a base minimum purchase price and then accept tips on top.
That’s also fine. If the initial price were lower than other comparable games then I assume that more people could be convinced to tip. Or even just if a company is very open about their work / income and dedicated to communicating to their players. I think there’s already some companies like that, though perhaps not necessarily the big ones.
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