It would have been garbage. Either they would have had to severely restrict the player in absurd ways to make sure that no one played the game “wrong,” and then posted edgy youtubes about it. Or they would have had to narrow the scope and strip so much context that it would be basically impossible to tell it was supposed to be the American civil war, other then seeing some union flag props around.
Given how tedious the American Revolution one was, essentially running on rails with your character inserted into key episodes, the Civil War episode would have sucked. Presumably you’d have been riding shotgun with Harriett Tubman and/or General Sherman in a succession of semi-interactive cut scenes, repeating until you shot/stabbed enough confederate NPCs to be rewarded with possibly a short break of open-world exploring as a treat.
Infinite growth is impossible, so they switched to squeezing something until it breaks, then identifying the next thing to squeeze. Eventually, they run out of things to squeeze, and switch to squeezing the people directly.
And it started with convincing console gamers it is necessary to pay for multiplayer. Whole ecosystem has been about trying to squeeze consumers for all the money they have. Even the locked proprietary hardware feeds into it of normalizing lack of control over hardware.
But, it is Microsoft at the top so not surprising.
Is it fair to blame 343 Studios’ incredibly, laughably incompetent handling of the Halo franchise for this? And by this I mean the obvious death of the Xbox as a gaming platform. Or, from a different perspective, could Halo have actually saved the Xbox if the games had been amazing, or even just good?
I remember when GamePass was first announced and everybody lauded Microsoft for being “pro-consumer” and outright cheered when they started buying up independent studios.
I remember being downvoted to oblivion for pointing out the very obvious 5 year plan for GP and the fact that it would go… exactly the way it’s currently going.
I feel like I responded to this exact comment on Reddit years ago saying the same. The thing people don’t realize, is subscriptions give you zero control of ownership and it’s always in the best interest of the corp to bait and switch.
Yep in this thread I’ve been arguing with someone who is saying consoles have to charge for online because it is so expensive… Yet, on PC for platforms like Steam and Epic despite also hosting game downloads and having multiplayer games they don’t charge.
Just goes to show how some consumers after being so used to not having flexibility and lack of restrictions when comes to products become convinced it is necessary.
Exactly, it was great at 11.99 IMO. As soon as I got the email saying a 50% increase, I cancelled. Surely they knew there would be cancellations but I’m not sure they knew there would be that many.
I’ve been in the fuck subscriptions camp. Sony locking multiplayer behind PS+ was wha5 led me to dropping consoles as my primary gaming system, since I refused to pay for multiplayer.
Platform infrastructure like PSN costs an inordinate amount of money. People owning games they paid for does not cost you any money.you already made your money back by selling them the ownership.
Sounds like excuses when PS3 and Nintendo Wii, WiiU, and Nintendo DS had free multiplayer and it was after Sony decided to start charging Nintendo also jumped onboard because they saw peope like you were easy to take their money.
I don’t even know why you’d have a problem with Xbox charging more for their subscription when you already argue for paid online.
Yes, charging customers for a product that costs you money to maintain is an excuse, and a valid one. Sony and Nintendo were giving away an expensive service for free to the user. It was generous, and a way to reduce friction with onboarding new users.
They jumped on board because maintaining that infrastructure has become exponentially more expensive to maintain today than it was 20 years ago.
I don’t even know why you’d have a problem with Xbox charging more for their subscription when you already argue for paid online.
Because unlike paid user services, game ownership is not something that costs them any money. They aren’t recouping their costs for a service they provide, it’s just rentseeking.
Yeah I don’t buy it. Nintendo does free across multiple hardware then when they saw they were the only one decided they’d start taking money too, since it is in a companies nature to maximize profits exponentially.
And then there’s Steam. Also in the hardware business and hosting games and mods and a bunch of other services even Epic with their Fortnite money hasn’t matched. Yet online is free.
You just sound like a consumer who iust accepts whatever methods companies try to exploit consumers and defend as necessary. More a stockholder than a consumer.
You don’t buy… the fact that infrastructure that has to scale to millions of users globally, and the salaries of the many employees who maintain it cost money…? Buddy that shit costs literal millions a year.
Nintendos online user services were never free. They went from not having them, to having them and charging money.
And yes Steam is eating a metric shit ton of costs to give you those services for free. Because PCs are an open platform, they have to compete to keep you on their storefront. They eat all those costs because you don’t have to buy new hardware in order to switch.
These are very, very simple concepts you’re failing to grasp.
Youre failing to grasp the fact that Sony didn’t need that infrastructure in the first place. Things worked great before they charged simply for you to play online.
Steam is a perfect example, they don’t charge for anything except a #% fee or tax on the game when you buy it. As well as their market fees.
I understand your point, though I agree with OP, it was foolish to start paying PS in the first place when literally every other console had free multi-player. It’s why I left XBOX and never got a PS. PC is just free after you pay your internet bill
It’s console brain basically of just never wanting to admit the cons. How many generations and decades went by before they finally admitted 60 fps and above is ideal after years of arguing 30 fps is enough.
Difference for me was I too move over to PC after the PS4, since why would i accept paying more for what is free on another platform.
Sony didn’t need that infrastructure in the first place. Things worked great before they charged simply for you to play online
What you’re both failing to grasp here is that the infrastructure existed when it was free. They always needed the infrastructure, and it always cost money. There is no “before”. They were just eating the costs as a marketing strategy to attract Xbox players who at the time had to pay for Xbox Live.
As console adoption increased, so did the cost of the infrastructure and the salaries of the many people it takes to maintain it, it just wasn’t feasible to provide those services for free when it cost so much money to maintain.
it was foolish to start paying PS in the first place when literally every other console had free multi-player
Every other console did not have free multiplayer. Xbox Live always cost money.
Company gets cut of every single game sold, gets more customers over the years, and because they are making even more money than ever they can’t stay afloat without charging for online.
Yeah… Okay… I wonder how Valve hasn’t gone bankrupt.
Company gets a cut of every game sold, gets exponentially more customers that use your infrastructure on a day to day basis, meanwhile the price of games stays the same for 20 years and game development cycles get longer while games and infrastructure gets more expensive to make.
I wonder how Valve hasn’t gone bankrupt.
I don’t. Valve is in a super sweet spot in the market and their near-monopoly on PC game sales and lean business model gives them a lot of breathing room that Companies like Sony don’t have. Some benefits Valve has:
They don’t need to worry about R&D of exclusive hardware often sold at a loss just to capture a user base. Valve has dipped its toes into hardware now, but even if its competitors eat some of its market share, those users will still buy games from Steam. On the other hand If people buy an Xbox instead of a PlayStation, Sony just loses out on the customers.
Valve doesn’t have to operate a number of first and second party game studios to churn out increasingly more expensive games.
Steam being a storefront on another company’s operating system means it can rely on external infrastructure to handle user services in many of its games.
Valve is a privately owned company so they have a lot more wiggle room to tread water and “stay afloat” when necessary and aren’t being driven to an ever-increasing profitability targets year after year.
Valve literally can’t charge you for their user services because you’re not stuck on their hardware. The very moment they do, they’ll lose all the user goodwill that has made them the default in their space and everybody can just pack up and move to another storefront or even just pirate their games. Valve has to eat those costs at the expense of everything else.”, they have no choice.
It’s because it was pretty much the Netflix of video games. Pay a subscription and you get access to a collection of games.
When it was 5.99 it was a no brainer. I think I cancelled mine around 13.99, though not because of the price but because I always forgot it existed and it tied me to windows. Switched to Linux and cancelling was a part of that transition.
No doubt in my mind M$ employs obfuscated layers of (contracted) marketing to astroturf, including downvotes of your cautionary comments. The line between a fanboy and astroturfer is blurred.
Gaining subscribers/customers while bleeding money, then charging more money once your competitors are forced out of the market or investors want to cash out, is a basic strategy… I doubt Game Pass was ever profitable, it was all an illusion propped up by accounting tricks and obfuscated/discounted internal operating costs (where M$ can shift xbox costs to money-printing cloud services division).
No doubt after years of failed xbox, that Phil Spencer is just a corporate suit executing the vision of M$ as a whole (in which Games is just an inconvenient detail). Expect more of the same, bundling of other services, no actual good in-house games. Activision acquisition in part of this strategy to pump up Game Pass, since M$ internal studios have not produced anything noteworthy this generation. I expect the next xbox to have cheaper hardware to undercut ps6, but to have increased game pass incentives to make up for it. maybe a random bundle with netflix. you gotta think outside of the (x)box for whats coming next.
gamespot.com
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