Physical media has been dying for years. If you look at the sales statistics between physical and digital, it makes for grim reading if you care about physical media.
75% of game sales in Europe in 2024 were digital. In 2022, 90% of game sales in the UK were digital. It’s a similar story pretty much everywhere. And whilst there’s a lot of noise on the internet about how bad a digital-only future would be, the average consumer doesn’t care.
I realized a while ago that it’s not actually the physical media I care about; it’s the unfettered access. Physical media is just the easiest way to achieve that. I still buy from steam and pay for streaming, but I recognize that those could be taken away at any time. I want to feel like I actually own something. I buy digital music because I get a DRM-free file. I buy from GOG because I get an installer that I can store locally for as long as I want to.
When it comes to movies? I have to buy the disc because (almost?) no one offers a DRM-free video file that I can store locally and play whenever or however I want.
“Game preservationists have long argued that a move to a digital-only future will cause games to be lost forever if proper preservation measures aren’t put in place.”
Unfortunately, even physical game discs so often don’t contain the full game files and requires access to servers in order to download and access the game. No longer is buying physical the answer to the game preservation problem.
I try to stay a patient gamer. If you do you’re usually rewarded with a discounted, patched up game with content it probably should have launched with. The exception I’ve been using for myself recently for AAA games is, is a the game a single player experience with no micro-transactions? If yes, I’ll buy it day one or close to it. I do want to show them that I’m willing to pay full price for these games if they aren’t predatory pieces of shit.
@sculd@theangriestbird I'm super happy that I started to play mostly indie or niche games, it's super rare I buy a AAA title. Mostly because the game play does feel identical to previous titles or close to other games of that genre without adding any own ideas.
The indie sector is so much more creative and often there are really deep game mechanics. I really do enjoy exploring those, big thank you to all indie developers for being creative and working hard.
@sculd@theangriestbird I do know that developers creating AAA titles do work hard as well to deliver a well polished game trying to fulfill the demand of the community and that it's hard to be as creative as a indie studio if you need to keep a really high graphic and performance standard. Thank you for making those games as well.
But I like to dive deep into mechanics of games and don't care that much about graphics.
Same. I find myself increasingly alienated by so called AAA games and turned to more indie games. I don’t need high graphics nor 60fps, just give me good game play.
Vampire Survivor and Balatro are only two of the more successful examples. I bought dozens of other indie titles that have little to no media coverage.
I do play one GaaS (from Mihoyo) casually though and it sort of fill my need when I want something to chase.
“While 98% of the fans are welcoming this, there will always be people like you,” Harada replied. “I understand and sympathize that it may not suit your personal taste, but if you prefer the old design, past works already exist. I am not taking those away from you.
“Also, you refer to yourself as ‘Anna fans’, as if you represent all Anna fans, but you should express your opinion as an individual.”
“You threaten to quit if she isn’t brought back, you complain the moment she is brought back,” he explained. “You demand that she be reverted after she has been completely redesigned from scratch, including her model and framework. And if she actually were reverted, you’d just say, ‘that’s recycling’.
“Either way, your method of expressing your opinion and the content of your argument are entirely unconstructive, utterly pointless, and, above all, disrespectful to the other Anna fans who are genuinely looking forward to her.”
It gives me hope that someone can be so elegant with (I assume) a language that isn’t native. Call me out if I’m wrong/racist. I was always a soul calibur fan anyway.
The cold hearted bastard in me thinks this was set up to sell more games.
I feel like this doesn’t get called out enough, “as an X fan…”, and?!? Do you represent the guild? Did you take a vote? Are you Professor Xavier? You being a fan doesn’t mean anything if you opinion is not constructive at all.
So, let me get this right, there’s been a shit storm about… A slightly different haircut?? They couldn’t even find a boob or butt that looks smaller than before?
I played Tekken all growing up, and my brother and I would have been ecstatic to hear that Anna had a new outfit, as that was a pretty rare thing that only really happened with new games. We never even played as Anna, but that doesn’t matter.
The world has gone too long without game developers returning criticism to fans. Some game devs don’t serve their fans well and deserve a blasting, but that’s generally a minority. Most of the time, gamers in online spaces are the same sort of Karen at the register saying “The customer is always right” every single day, and they‘ve needed to take a step back for a long time.
Corollary: I play an online game that’s full of glitches. I’m upset at the dev about it, but also patient because I know programming is hard, and I’m sure they get frustrated at those bugs too.
your method of expressing your opinion and the content of your argument are entirely unconstructive, utterly pointless, and, above all, disrespectful
That could be applied to so many random Twitter complaints. Just generally whiny, and completely lacking in any kind of understanding of how the process, in this case game development, works. Nevertheless they are confident in announcing their opinion to the universe. As if anyone cared
All that for a new haircut? Doesn’t even look like that out of place of a style change to me.
I mean, look at what Castlevania Judgment did to its characters back then if you want terrible redesign. Most of them were unrecognizable. Simon, Maria and Death became Death Note cosplayers, others like Grant and Carmilla went full SoulCalibur knock-off.
Along with bad anime trope personality graft for half of them.
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Aktywne