MS is in the subscription selling business now. Their entire gaming future hinges on GamePass, and while I like the idea of games on tap (I’ve basically bought BG3 for my PS5 and nothing else in the year since I bought it, enough on PS+ to keep me going and I can barely catch up let alone keep up), I suspect the big devs that spend hundreds of millions on making AAA games are less than enthralled with the idea and if GamePass and day one “free” games win, the outcome will be more games that I’m not really interested in.
PS+ is not as good a product as GamePass, but I believe it’s healthier overall for the gaming industry.
When you say PS Plus, do you mean the Essentials tier which is (was) equivalent to Gold or the other tiers?
For the record, I think PS Plus Premium and Extra are great (until the price hike). The vast majority of time when I want to play a game day-1, it’s not something that’s even on GamePass. So their day-1 stuff means nothing to me.
But also, Essentials has given me enough to play I could just never run out of games.
The higher tiers. Not sure about the top one (Premium) any more. I got it because I thought I might want to play the older games, but it turns out there’s plenty of PS4 and PS5 games to keep me going, and frankly not enough choice of PS1 and 2 games to tempt me. A more complete library would have made sense, but I’ve literally got more on my shelf than they’ve got on PS Plus Premium.
And my internet is too rubbish for me to want to stream the handful of PS3 games either. It hasn’t even got MGS4 which would be the one interesting thing that hasn’t been anywhere else.
The reason it’s not working out is because they had no exclusives, now they do and the people on the platform that always had exclusives are suddenly upset.
It's outselling is what caused Microsoft to not deny it. It originally denied it because they had a rule that games needed feature parity with both Series X and S. BG3 split screen couldn't be done on S. The massive success is what led them to relax the rule. And virtually no one saw this level of success coming from within the gaming industry, including the developers themselves.
Edit: I just realized this is being upset about Starfield.
That is totally the fault of gamers. The biggest reason given for buying a PS5 over Xbox was exclusives. What the fuck did you think was going to happen? Sony started the exclusives battle and continually came out ahead. Obviously MS is going to fight. Making exclusives such an important decision in console purchases drove exclusives to be important overall. There's no sense in being upset that the industrynis literally responded to gamer's actions and stated motivations.
Microsoft would develop their existing first party studios and improve the quality of their first party titles, invest in third parties that they already had exclusive relationships with, or invest in up and coming studios?
Had Bethesda published a Microsoft exclusive since Morrowind?
You don't expect that from Sony so why expect it elsewhere? Sony started this game, gamers lauded them and rewarded them for doing it. Microsoft tried to not do that, and got beat down further than they had when they tried playing that game against Sony. Gamers wanted exclusives. Microsoft is providing that. You voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party and now are surprised leopards are eating your face.
This was a forgone conclusion for awhile now. Folks are just upset because Microsoft has an exclusive that Sony gamers want to play. Boo fucking hoo. I'm pissed it came to this, but gamers did this. I'm angry about it, but I don't feel sorry for gamers as a whole about it.
Did they, though? I think exclusives predate Sony and even the PS1. They’ve been a part of the console space since basically the inception of the medium. Xbox itself launched with an exclusive “killer app” in Halo. Timed third party exclusivity and exclusive Map Packs were very popular with the 360 when it was on top in the seventh generation as well.
I don’t think Sony has ever made an acquisition of the same scope as Zenimax either in price or in how much of the market was fenced off from a studio they previously had access to. That’s not even going into the Activision deal.
Maybe we can now point to Bungie, but that was still half the price. Most of Sony’s acquisitions over its time were studios that were already de facto developing exclusively for their consoles. Even Insomniac. If you look at their history, Sunset Overdrive is a lone anomaly.
Exclusives suck, but I don’t see them going away as long as consoles and capitalism exist. You’re basically throwing shade at Sony for daring to fund the development of critically and commercially acclaimed games that gave them the reputation of having a quality first party library. Starfield on the other hand was developed as cross platform title until Microsoft paid 7.5 billion to acquire a major publisher. Wasn’t this confirmed this week by the document leaks?
Few complain when Halo is released exclusively because no one is being surprised that those games are now exclusive titles. That isn’t the case with the new Bethesda deal.
Sony and Microsoft used to pay for exclusives without buying the studios. So there's no real meat to the argument that "oh, the games were always exclusive because first party" or whatever. The consoles didn't really buy that many game studios until relatively recently in gaming history. They would pay a studio to not release on other platforms. This whole buying studios thing was just cheaper in the long run. So there's no real argument to be made about Sony just making better first party games. That's what they do now given that they own the studios. Both companies are guilty of buying out studios.
Exclusives pre-dating the PS1 was more out of lack of technology. No cross platform tech really existed. There wasn't a lot of crossover. Many platforms didn't last more than a generation or two. There wasn't even much cross over in the kind of games. If you liked fighting games, you bought a Sega over Nintendo for example. With the PlayStation, they competed against Sega first, Nintendo as more an afterthought. Xbox came in later to compete against PlayStation 2. The Nintendo 64 was just a different class, and even later, the GameCube. With Xbox and PlayStation, they had similar amounts of power and restraints (an N64 cartridge could not compete from a technical perspective against the storage of discs, plus multi-disc games could exist, not really feasible with cartridges) plus abstraction technology was more advanced and one could more easily write cross platform code. Now, you either had to pay for an exclusive or simply hope they only had the intent to target one platform (whether through preference or resource limitations). So the console wars really started to heat up after the death of Dreamcast and mainly between Sony and MS. Exclusivity wasn't via first party existed, but not to s great extent beyond their flagship games.
So, tldr, exclusivity has always been acquired via money and buying them. It's easy to say it's about developing better first party once those studios were bought outright to begin with. That's how most first party titles exist now.
No, but Oblivion came to PS3 later and Skyrim was outright broken on PS3, then Sony scuppered their console mod plans by not allowing deep enough system access. Safe to say they probably didn’t have the best relationship.
Sony doesn’t buy IP and deny it to other platforms. Their IP starts on Sony. If Microsoft never wanted to release Halo to Sony, it’s their decision to do so, but buying something that don’t had access to, then denying it is a shit move.
Gaming isn’t bedroom coders knocking out games in basic for microcomputers any more, it’s a huge entertainment industry and that’s how those industries work.
This is no different from Disney pulling Fox properties of other steaming platforms to put them on Disney+ since they brought them out.
Yes they do. They used to buy exclusive rights back during PS2 days but eventually both MS and Sony realized it's cheaper to just buy the studios. Sony has only a small number fewer acquisitions than Microsoft. Both companies have always bought exclusivity.
My reason for buying a PS5 is my Xbone bit the dust, and my Xbox 360 also had issues when I traded it in. My ps2 and ps1 still work. There was also the fact that the only available options were PS5 or Series S. I didn’t buy the console for exclusives, I bought it because it was the better available console and my previous one was dead.
No I didn’t. The announcement of their intentions to fully absorb Bethesda didn’t even come out until around the PS5’s release, and wasn’t completed until like 6 months after. Not everyone pays close attention to gaming news. And if you bought the console early on, there is a chance you never would have even heard about it, let alone completely understood the implications of the purchase.
Ok? But your experience doesn't change what the number one reason given is though? Sure, I don't get Pixel phone anymore either because two in a row failed on me, but I don't go around telling everyone "no one buys pixel phones because they die easily"
Yeah, but MS games aren’t console exclusive. They come out on PC day one two which is a bigger audience than both consoles combined. Given the player numbers Starfield really hasn’t suffered due to not being on PS. In some countries it’s doing exactly what a console exclusive should and getting people to pick up an Xbox.
If you don’t think a company as big as MS did a cost/benefit analysis before they made the decision I don’t know what to tell you. Of course any product available to more people sells better, but MS are playing a longer game. If previous Bethesda games are anything to go on, people will be talking about, modding, posting clips, etc of this game for a while and that’s tons of free advertising for XB and Gamepass.
ROFL… if you don’t think a company as big as Microsoft can’t make mistakes, I don’t know what to tell you.
And talking about a game isn’t selling copies. Nor is modding. People are pirating it and for good reason. It’s not worth the cash spent to donate to a company that thrives based on free labor to fix the bug ladened disasters they release.
How do you think marketing works? Someone posts a cool thing they’ve done in Starfield, and someone else gets some FOMO and decides to buy the game, sub to Gamepass, get an Xbox to play it, etc.
No not everyone is pirating the game, a lot of people on Lemmy may be as this is an echo chamber of techie types, but the general audience don’t even know how to, and if they prefer to play on console, can’t.
Clearly you have beef with Bethesda, and are letting it cloud your judgement here, but the fact of the matter is lots of people are playing and enjoying the game as is, out the box before any mods are officially available.
Over one game? I thought Fallout 4 was a disappointing step back from New Vegas and 76 was a misjudged project that turned up messy and broken and I’ve never even looked at playing. The last game of theirs I truly enjoyed pre Starfield was Skyrim, over a decade ago. I’m not white knighting them, you clearly have an irrational hatred of them and are unable to admit when they do something positive, a common issue today when people turn hating something into their identity and are unable to ever move from the stance. Like most Devs, they’ve had their ups and downs and the ups should be praised and the downs criticised.
Well there’s the fact that you omitted Sony and Nintendo from your criticism entirly, despite the fact that both companies have bought numerous studios and paid other studios to make games exclusively for their respective platforms for decades, thereby reducing their potential revenue for some benefit that’s clearly obvious to those companies.
And yet, when Microsoft does it…they are just limiting their potential market for no reason and it’s obviously a stupid business move. Sure. Seems a little sus, is all.
Either the entire fucking industry is guilty of this “bad business practice” or maybe there’s a calculated reason for it. Pick one.
You don’t see me complaining about Halo, do you? Do you wonder why? It’s because Microsoft did it with an IP that was already widely popular across all platforms, and then pulled it. And if I remember correctly, told everyone they wouldn’t pull it.
Sony hasn’t don’t that. Again, as I’ve said, they begin with their own IP. And that IP from creation is Sony exclusives.
Um…Sony was in talks to pay for Starfield to be a PS exclusive - which would have taken it from PC for a year and from xbox permenantly - until MS bought Beth.
Also, Starfield is a new IP, not an “already existing and widely popular” one…
I’ll also mention that Phil Spencer publically admonished and fought against exclusivity agreements for years. He has said in interviews both private and public that he prefers a world where there are no exclusives. Until the market spoke and declared “exclusives” to be the measuring stick of a platform’s health, thus forcing his hand. And now here we are.
And here we finally have the primary motivation for this comment.
Well we won’t know for sure on those for a few years. All we have are old FTC docs and no public statements. Regardless, existing games aren’t going anywhere. But even if it happens for future games, well, Sony’s been sowing this harvest for some time.
The reviews so far have been fairly positive. I’m pretty eager to jump in to 2.0 tomorrow. I’ll have 5 days to get my new character ready for PL!
I just finished a playthrough a couple weeks ago with a Sandevistan+Katana build, which was SUPER fun! I was planning on going Stealth Netrunner for this play through but after seeing all the changes to the existing systems, I am tempted to go Sandy+Sword again. But I will probably control my urges and focus on Stealth to complement the “spy thriller” story of PL.
Honestly, if nothing else, I’m grateful for the fact that they give you a cyberware capacity - the extended gameplay trailer they showed implied that certain cyberwares would have a ‘humanity’ cost but the game had none of that on release, just treated like extra equipment slots, which was incredibly disappointing. Also it looks as though they’re not locking weapon upgrades behind the tech tree, which is great, because the fact that you could pick up uniques that would be useless in a few levels unless you dropped everything into tech (and even then) was also a major disappointment.
Yeah the crafting change is huge. It frees up a lot of points from “mandatory” crafting so you can really branch out more. Builds should be a lot more interesting and hard to screw up now.
The big change with cyberware that I like is 1 - You don’t have to go to every ripperdoc (or some online wiki) to find the bits you need anymore. Every ripperdoc sells everything. and 2 - You can upgrade it as you level so you don’t have to worry about “wasting money” buying low tier stuff early that you’ll have to replace later.
I hadn’t heard about those changes, but that’s quite a relief. I hated traveling to individual ripperdoc clinics to snag all the best upgrades. Especially because the best cyberware for your frontal cortex can only be bought from a VDB ripper in Pacifica, and I didn’t want to give those assholes any of my eddies.
Not to mention Fingers had the best Sandevistan and leg mods in the game and not punching him is SO HARD! Now neither of those mods are in the game anymore and you can safely beat the crap out of Fingers with no regrets.
Yeah and the new reworked Berserker cyberware to go with it! Gorilla Arms with the new relic perks to make them explode people from punching too hard… tempting indeed!
The huge update that completely rebalances the game, improves UI, and changes the gear system is free. As for PL itself, I’ll happily continue BG3 until the hype dies down and I get a feel for whether it’s actually worthwhile.
The game runs the same or better on the hardware I have after the 2.0 patch. There are just more options to use, and thus the recommended has increased.
Well I guess now is as good as any to finally try the game again. I was one of the foolish people that had fallen for the initial hype of the game. Tried it on launch day and was insanely disappointed. Time to go find a cheap used copy
playstation started declining with ps3 which released in 2006. PS4 released in 2013, a decade ago. PS4 wasn't worth buying. That's a decade of garbage from sony.
Amazing. Hopefully that company moves into the 21st century and allows crossplay to all their online games, and perhaps even a step further and redecuding exclusive games and add release more PC games.
As much as I hate to say it, I dunno that reducing exclusive is the best play right now with Microsoft locking down Bethesda and anything else they can get away with.
Perhaps, it seems they are only doing it because Sony won’t play nice. There would have to be some sort of agreement between the two titans. Nintendo won’t play nice ever.
I think in this dynamic, Microsoft+XBox has done by far the most damage to gaming, and so has the least amount of karma and trust. Whereas Sony had free, great online multiplayer services on even the PS2, Microsoft quickly ripped off everybody else's consoles, relied on Halo to sell, has the worst everything, and has pushed the majority of anti-consumer practices in both gaming and the wider technology markets.
I bed to differ. Microsoft has done a ton of good in the recent years with PC gamepass, all their titles available on PC and even many on steam. Sure Sony was fantastic in up till PS3, PS4 and PS5t have gone down hill. Worst payment structure, and their PS equivalent of gamepass is/was awful. On the plus side PS has been adding a couple games a year later after their respective launch onto Steam.
This post implies that Sony has more trust is ridiculous. They refuse to secure their online services, leading to recurring hacks. There was whole rootkit fiasco which was crazy bad.
They defended the ridiculous launch prices of the PS3 by saying that they think consumers should just work more hours to afford one.
They still do shit things like hide basic features like cloud saves behind a paywall. That have no problem paying for exclusive games and exclusive content and if they had the money MS had they would do the same thing MS is doing.
MS, Sony, Nintendo and everyone else out there doesn’t care about trust, disagreements, or “playing nice”. They will do what is most profitable for them. Sometimes that means doing something pro-consumer, like announcing the backwards compatibility program or releasing exclusives on PC day one, other times it means buying out the competition and securing exclusive releases to fight off the competition.
The idea that Microsoft of all things would “play nice” with Sony, as if they were children playing together in the schoolyard, is absurd, and revisionist at its finest considering Microsoft’s history in and outside the gaming sphere.
Curious why everyone in the comments (as of my own comment) is happy about this?
Sure, he exudes C-suite personality and doesn’t act like he’s a gamer. But that doesn’t matter. He oversaw Sony’s rise to dominance in the console market. That dominance is built on the foundation of their first party AAA games — which is a less than ten year old change for them. Sony porting their big games to PC was a project that was fully embraced under his leadership.
Point being, as a gamer it seems like he’s done a fairly decent job. I don’t care how boring his interviews or speeches are or that he looks and acts like he belongs in a board room — they’re all like that anyway even if their public persona says otherwise. I care about games and treatment of consumers.
I don’t get it either. PlayStation have release some amazing first party games, and equally great consoles over his tenure that have captured my imagination and passion many times over. These are the things that matter, not some idealised or stereotypical c-suite gamer persona. He’s done great things with PlayStation and deserves the credit for that.
I’d hardly pin their rise on him, in 2019 when he took over it was already pretty clear they were on top in the high end console front. If anyone should take credit it’s Don Mattrick lmao
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