It has had a lot of polish aince the beta last year, and the store stuff/season pass microtransaction hell was dialed down. The first season pass appears to be free, not sure how they will handle that stuff in the future.
It is still fun to play although all the flashy daily stuff and the awkward menu navigation is atill annoying.
I’m excited to get back into it. Is the game still unbalanced towards 1v1, though? My biggest issue is that it felt too easy to dodge everything that matches would last forever until someone gets hit.
I just remembered that Redfall also flopped last year, and that was supposed to be one of their two big titles, along with Starfield, which got overshadowed, to say the least.
Wikipedia tells me the CoD release in 2023 was “the lowest-rated mainline Call of Duty installment on Metacritic”, although it seemed to have still printed them money with essentially no work invested, so I guess that’s good?
Diablo IV, I think, did reasonably well in its niche. I remember it being a bit overshadowed by Zelda.
Not sure, if I’m forgetting any other major Microsoft/Bethesda/Arcane/Obsidian/Activision/Blizzard/King games, but yeah, that doesn’t look too great…
Much as I am loath to admit it, Diablo IV did amazing beyond its niche. Anecdotally I saw soooo many people who’d never played Diablo or any game like it get onboard.
Feels like an understatement - this was the game that killed Arkane, because a majority of the team decided they’d rather fuck off than work on whale chasing live-service nonsense. And like, good on them, but it means no more Dishonored, no sequels to Prey, no chance of Arx Fatalis II, and it fucking sucks to see enshittification strangling good talent. I hope they’ll find success outside of MS’ looming shadow.
EXACTLY! Oh man. You wanna know what game doesn’t have steering wheel support? Crusin’ USA. It’s only available on the switch. Like wtf Nintendo. Give this to us!
One of the earliest pieces of media I can remember consuming was the mid-90s TV show Viper, where James played the main character. I remember very little about the show except James's face and that he played his character cool as fuck.
I've been replaying Alan Wake and Control recently, and I have such a soft spot for his roles in them because I loved that stupid show when I was a kid.
I rewatched Viper a few months ago, it’s on Pluto for free. For the first time since it aired in the 90s. I didn’t remember that he only did the first 2 seasons. I also only rewatched the 2 seasons he is in, since he was essential for this show. I may have dropped it also, when it aired that’s why i forgot it had more seasons.
Still cool as fuck, including the sparkling gloriousness of the 90s.
The fad isn’t over until there’s something to replace it. Right now, I’m pretty sure we’re securely in the era of “PvPvE extraction shooters” now that the top three Battle Royale podium has ended up Fortnite, Call of Duty, and PUBG.
Though, frankly, CoD DMZ is probably going to win Extraction Shooters for no reason other than that it’s free and all the stuff carries over into CoD BR and the standard multiplayer. If they don’t kill carry forward next year, they’re in a position for some serious success. I’ve given it a play for no reason other than that it’s the easiest mode to get battlepass progression in and the M13B was locked behind playing it.
You don't think Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown, and CoD DMZ are already the top three of the extraction shooter fad? It doesn't necessarily need to be replaced if the players already found their games in the fad and no new entries can successfully launch. Dota, LoL, and Smite are still around and thriving, but no one's making MOBAs anymore.
Wait… that math does not possibly check out. In the worst case scenario (Steam), they pay 30% of the revenue from the game in platform fees. If they spend less than that for settlement, simple math tells us that there is at least 41% of the revenue basically unaccounted for.
There’s a bit of overhead in every company, like HR, IT and facilities, so maybe these don’t count for “development cost” (which makes no sense tbh, that’s not how project budgets work). Marketing can eat a ton of money, too, but the numbers still seem bafflingly high.
What? It just means that they spend less than 30% on development. That doesn’t sound too far off, as a lot of the money probably goes to marketing, management, administration or (gasp) profits.
Unless I live under a rock I don’t see the point of spending a lot on marketing ads for games. Two big examples of games that sold extremely well that I never saw an ad for were elden ring and boulders gate three. If you just make a good game word of mouth will tell how good the game is not an ad on TV.
It seems like it can make sense. Platform fees aren’t an initial outlay, they’re effectively a cut of profits based on sales.
For the sake of argument using fake numbers, if a studio spends $1m making a game, and then they put it on Steam and it does $10m in sales, then Steam’s cut of that at 30% will be $3m
So, spending more on store fees than development seems possible - especially if your game is selling really well
I hope most developers stay away from Denuvo on Switch. Devs already have to squeeze the thing for every fps they can get out of it, it really doesn’t need anything else bogging it down.
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