I use both. I have the PS5 upstairs, and the PS4 down in the family room. I can remote play the PS5 from downstairs, which is nice. And the PS Portal is nice when I’m taking a sh…
Seriously. The United States just sent nearly $60B to Ukraine. Nearly 18 times more than this. If humans weren’t so intent on fighting with each other and instead spent that time, energy, and resources on advancing as a connected society, we could do amazing things. Instead, we’re barreling into the future as predicted by RoboCop.
You can’t just cut keeping tyrants at bay though. I totally agree starting a war is stupid, but defending against invasion definitely isn’t. And it prevents future wars from starting or spreading. So as cool as it would be to invest trillions into space exploration, we can’t just leave Ukraine out to dry.
I totally agree with you, I’m all for funding Ukraine’s defense. It’s just my idealist fantasy that everyone one day wakes up and realizes we’re being collectively quite stupid for the benefit of a very small segment of the population and we could do so much more if we cut them out.
Why wiuld any companies trust them at this point…bail, let unity die and set a precedent to other engines to not fuck with the companies that make the products.
I just wish collectively humanity could do the same for these multi billionaire companies who will kill you to make 10 cents profit.
I still think its a terrible idea to start a new project in unity, but for developers who are too far into a project to reasonably switch without spending a lot of time or money (like Ultrakill or Silksong), this is good as it means they can finish their games without having to worry about a passive income loss which could put them out of business.
A shame, but the writing has been on the wall for a long time. Volition was never quite the same after the THQ bankruptcy, and that was still several years before Embracer took over.
Sad, because I was a fan of them and bought all their games from Saint's Row 1 all the way to Gat out of Hell (although not in chronological order) and got Agents of Mayhem for free somewhere, but think they've made some bad moves lately.
I think it all started going downhill from Agents of Mayhem, and them screwing up with the reboot of Saint's Row was probably the nail in the coffin. I wish they'd just made Saint's Row 5 instead, with wacky time travel shenanigans and a more polished set of superpowers.
At the point where they decided to "reboot" to something old school and grittier (TOO old school, imo) they really didn't get what their fanbase wanted, and what new players who'd only heard of and experienced Saint's Row 4 would get excited about.
They could've probably taken Saint's Row up to 6 entries if they'd just iterated on the formula from 4 and possibly Gat out of Hell (I wouldn't know, I got distracted and didn't play it after I bought it, ironically). Similar to how United Front Games (the developer of Sleeping Dogs) could've probably stayed in business if they'd just made Sleeping Dogs 2 instead of that horrible "free to play" multiplayer asset flip of some of the least interesting elements of Sleeping Dogs 1.
I’ve never really understood the hate for Agents of Mayhem. It really captures “playable action movie” perfectly. I’d say my biggest complaint is that it is very poorly balanced such that most characters are unusable at the highest difficulties.
That’s what happened to Sleeping Dogs? Lame. I loved that game!
I agree with Saints Row. I didn’t think new younger audiences would take to a restart of the formula, or that old fans would want to start from scratch so to speak. Meanwhile ramping up from 4 would sate the old fans by somehow getting even more bonkers, and younger gamers would have this insane shit show of a sandbox even if they aren’t familiar with the brand (and would probably boost sales of the old ones too.)
Yep, it's been a trend all year. My studio got canned back at the end of January. Publisher called us into a studio-wide meeting scheduled during lunch with 1 hour of notice, only to say "The game you spent 6 years on is canceled and all 150 of you are fired. The media will know in 30 minutes, don't say anything until then if you want to keep a severance package." (I have since landed on my feet elsewhere.)
These studios are owned by big publishers and generally work for years at a loss. With the costs to borrow increasing, we're seeing cuts on long-term investments that might not make their money back (like movies and games).
Volition was owned by Embracer, which is now struggling with funding. So anything that isn't a sure bet is effectively canned - and in turn you see these studios shut down left and right, plus big layoffs from studios that are still open.
There’s your problem. Hiring an entire team for 6+ years and then cancelling the project. That’s hundreds of thousands, if not millions, down the drain.
The current AA / AAA gamedev industry isn’t sustainable
Baldur's Gate took 6 years to make. Starfield has been in development since 2015 - that's 8 years. As gamers demand more, games have grown in scope. The ones that stayed behind have gotten punished.
If a AAA game doesn't have at least 8 hours of story and realistic graphics in the modern era, it gets panned by reviewers. People's expectations have been raised - and are continuing to be raised - and in turn, that inflates how long it takes to make a game. People will say "Why should I spend $60 on this game when I can spend $60 on this game that gives me more stuff?" (See: Immortals of Aveum, which itself has been in development for 4-5 years.)
The games that don't take that long are the stale yearly franchises - the FIFAs and CODs of the world. Even COD alternates between studios, with each installment taking 1-3 years. Some franchises (like Pokemon) have multiple teams within a studio that operate independently of one another; Arceus was made by the Let's Go team, while Scarlet/Violet was made by the Sword/Shield team.
If studios stop betting on long-term projects, you're going to wind up with stale yearly iterations - or half-baked games rushed out the door to meet a deadline. If it's true that you say AAA (and even AA!) dev isn't sustainable, then that's effectively calling for stale franchises pushing out cheap content for quick cash grabs (see also: Hollywood movies over the last decade).
It's also not just games this is happening to. Disney recently canned a 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea show that was ready to go. There's the Scooby-Doo stuff that Max recently pulled before release as well. That stuff isn't my industry; I don't know how long it takes to make those things... but I know it costs about as much to make as a AAA game does.
There's probably a reckoning to be had for both industries, but I don't think the correction should be that drastic - and I think it will be bad for people who consume that content.
With TV/movies that are made for streaming this seems to be some classic Hollywood accounting. They are taking the write-offs in the cancelled content, while keeping subscribers strung along with the promise of new projects. The question is how long until consumers stop buying it.
I wish studios like Bethesda would adopt a more stylistic art style and games that were smaller in scope. I don’t need to explore 10 000 planets with realistic graphics. I just want a tight RPG with good world building.
I think this is the crux of the issue. There’s been a trend for AAA to push for bigger and more ambitious games, which leads to long, expensive development cycles. But pretty much everyone who is passionate about gaming can point to a game that stuck with them not because it was huge and ambitious, but because it did one thing really well. Games don’t have to be huge to be amazing.
Worth playing with the PS1 Descent soundtrack too for a different experience (or Descent Maximum as it was across the pond), it got me in to Type O-Negative too.
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