What does Xbox even have that I couldn’t already play on my PC? Halo’s dead; there’s no reason to humor Xbox as a console anymore. Microsoft’s still-surviving exclusives are all mid; so really, why would I get one of these when I could just play on my PC, or pick up a Steam Deck to have access to my PC’s library?
Valve only makes the deck available in a handful of countries while Xbox hardware is available pretty much everywhere, so I’d say it’s natural to assume a hypothetical dexbox would too
Because Xbox deck wouldn’t be made by a tiny gambling company. It would be made by a massive corporation with footholds for tech already established in practically every country.
Nintendo: “Let’s force retro gamers to buy the Switch if they want to play our titles, by pressuring Steam to remove all Nintendo emulators, and by suing Switch emulators into oblivion.”
Also Nintendo: “Why don’t retro gamers want to buy our products anymore?”
What happened 10 weeks ago? Did they run some projections and realized their Fortnite revenue aren’t going to cover the operating expense for the whole company anymore?
Her videos about women in video games were mind-blowing. And I never forgot her Lego City vs. Lego Friends comparison. Smurfette-syndrome and damsel distress are words I didn‘t know before watching this channel.
This sucks for Canadians as well. I have a feeling 8bit ships all stock to the USA first then ships it by truck North and South from a distribution center. This means import fees are paid at the port of entry.
Not sure if demand is high enough for 8bit to ship directly to Canada or even have a warehouse in Canada TBH.
I’ve almost completely stopped keeping up with M:TG these days. I used to be into it but it just feels like it’s completely jumped the shark these days.
so i sold out of mtg around covid and they started committing to “universe beyond”. but all signs point to their stupid shit being profitable for the time being. and the new UB stuff will now be going through standard will help their new player onboarding a bit.
Lord of the Rings was massively successful, and I’ve been seeing even more buzz for Final Fantasy than there was LotR. Universes Beyond is certainly here to stay.
exactly. but you can’t just keep farming UB forever. you need to onboard them into the ecosystem and keep them hooked in. time will tell if these people only cared about their specific media or if enough latch on to mtg the game.
I enjoyed the early mythos of M:tG, but I already started losing interest when they went all Marvel with their whole Gatewatch thing.
Even though individual sets (like LOTR) have been well made and successful, the whole Universes Beyond thing just further dilutes the identity of Magic too much for me. I’m sick of endless exploitation of existing IPs from all over the entertainment business. I understand why they do it from a financial perspective, but it doesn’t appeal to me at all.
Add to that the endless garbage of Secret Lair drops like goddamn Spider-Man and SpongeBob and I think MTG just isn’t for me anymore.
I personally dont get why they went with Nvidia again, they make cheap mobile processors and I doubt this one will be any different. Imo they should have gone with a low end AMD APU based on Ryzen 9000.
Yet another reason that copyright really needs to be revamped hardcore. You should not be able to retroactively revoke a license in that way and the entire idea of yeah I license you to be able to use this for x amount of years is ridiculous to me either you can use the Media or you can’t.
I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite a lot back on the Xbox 360. The whole city in the clouds but also it’s the early 20th century setting was really attractive to me, and I enjoyed it pretty much throughout. Elizabeth being an actually useful NPC sidekick that you don’t have to do endless shitty escort missions for was a great move. I don’t understand the hate it gets after a few years have passed.
It was criticized when and after it came out, so it isn’t something that’s come up recently. But as you mentioned, there were some praises as well, as NPC escort missions were a bane in gaming at the time and this game did get praise for Elizabeth for that.
However, much like the comment “the medium is the message”, I think also Bioshock was a series that was very close to people’s hearts and they had a specific idea about what exactly made it feel like that atmosphere. My stance has always been, Bioshock Infinite is a phenomenal game that isn’t quite Bioshock, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s like… It’s like the entirety of the series Metroid, and then Other M. Had Other M been literally any other name and character, it would have been a perfectly fine game.
But since it, and Bioshock Infinite, are tied to their namesakes, staying in line with that atmosphere that they create is imperative for a fanbase. For all of the faults that Bioshock 2 had, they still nailed the thematic portion of the world that appealed to so many people in Bioshock 1. They’re dark, gritty, a musk of musty air fills the entirety of the game and characterization. They’re also quite creepy, with that setting on top of the insanity and tight enclosed spaces under the oppression of the ocean.
Bioshock Infinite seems to abandon that thematic element almost entirely. And mind you, they did the bright and airy world very well, I can only imagine what it would have been like if they had been able to complete the entirety of their vision! I suspect something like Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom size was always the goal, given all the details shared about what they had to cut out.
That tonal shift I am almost certain is a majority of the cause for the issues with Bioshock Infinite - as this was the sentiment I gathered upon release and the coming years. It was two-fold though too, because by changing the nature of the tonality of the game, the gameplay itself seemed to be “brightened”, maybe in an attempt to make it more accessible, maybe to make it more engaging, but it seems pretty commonly agreed that Bioshock Infinite is just easier. The puzzles seemed toned down (IMO almost more of a point a -> point b puzzle), and while yeah the ending was a very well done version of this, I think many also felt like it somewhat removed the agency the players were struggling with, just to toss in a “you have and always will be” multiversal moment.
Anyway, all this to say, these aren’t explicitly my opinions on Bioshock, I’m just an analyst. I enjoyed most of Bioshock Infinite, but it is clear to see that there is a difference in the show-don’t-tell of Bioshock and the tell-show-tell of Bioshock Infinite. I actually am able to replay Infinite, where I have a hard time replaying 1 and especially 2, just because they’re so goddamn scary for me, lol. Much of the gameplay of Infinite is also just slightly more modern, with 1 and 2 just being slightly slower and clunkier without the movement option of the grappling hook.
I think another way of putting this is to look at an entirely different game, We Happy Few. It seems to me that We Happy Few wanted to make the atmosphere of Bioshock 1 but with the brighter narrative style of Bioshock Infinite, which inevitably resulted in the clashing of those two themes. In the case of Bioshock Infinite, it is that very same clashing of themes which I think heavily affected the players perception of the game. Again, had it been named, like, “Sky Cultist: Enigma” or something like that, it would have been perfectly well received and would have maybe even gone down in gaming history positively. Instead, it was tied to Bioshock and is kinda seen as “it’s good but meh” as a byproduct of such a drastic shift. I also think the desire to go from sea to sky is just a little cheesy, and while it was done well enough I’m also sort of hmmmeehh on that whole side of it. Fun areas to play in, but… not very Bioshocky, even with the steam punk elements.
Which is too bad. It had many technically good qualities about it, from the story arcs, from memory I feel like the pacing was pretty good, I remember the gameplay early and mid-way being fun although I do feel like I remember just a little bit of bullet spongeyness and resource/ammo collection mid-late sections of the game. Obviously the ending was quite good, and I really enjoyed the cult story. However, the bright sky world is very contrasting to the murderdeath cult and gore of it all, and I personally wasn’t as big of a fan of the thematic shift, both in the overworld but also in the march towards the Industrial Revolution. It just felt so out of place to me (specifically the Patriots, or maybe I just hated fighting so many of them) considering we had this entire underwater industrial complex in Rapture. However this is alleviated somewhat by the ending of Infinite, since these are all infinite possibilities oooooohhhh the name makes sense nowwwww!
So yeah, all in all I think it turned a bit underwater espionage revealing the secret project to the world to floating cult investigation revealing the… secret project to the world.
No, there won’t be another xbox. Phil Spencer is angling to get gamepass on nintendo and sony. But he’s going to have to force it through the courts and government legislation, much like epic is doing with mobile stores now.
It’s a play for the consumer’s money, and when the consumer has better options than the traditional console model, the console model breaks down. They’ve got at least one more Xbox in them, whether or not that next Xbox is just a PC with different branding.
The “better option” is subscription services where you own nothing and the bottom drops out of the industry, just like music and film. You can cheer for that if you want, but it is not in the interests of the consumer.
I wasn’t cheering for subscription services. I was cheering that this exclusivity model of walled gardens no longer makes economic sense, while open platforms are on the rise. Microsoft is hoping that their pivot will result in more subscribers to their subscription service, but all signs are pointing to them having a rough time of growing beyond where they stand now, for all sorts of reasons.
polygon.com
Ważne