Makes sense, but if it’s only $10 it should just be free. $10 isn’t worth the bad PR and they should want this tour thing in as many hands as possible.
I think this money grab wouldn’t have gotten as much run in the media if it hadn’t been front and center in the Direct. Feels like a misstep, but then, so does €90 Mario Kart…
Last I heard they cancelled work on the next sims, doubled down on “improving the health” of The Sims 4 with improvements instead. Truly transformed into a GaaS, being 10+ years old.
Ah, didn’t know that. I thought I’d seen a teaser or something for a new game years ago but didn’t know if it was true as I hadn’t seen anything new about it in ages.
While it’s not a game I’d play, they should just make a new game I agree.
To be fair, their predatory DLC model for Sims 4 means that their primary customer base has hundreds of dollars invested. Abandoning it at this point might piss a ton of them off. It’s also worth considering that a lot of their users aren’t normal gamers. They typically have basic devices that aren’t really geared towards gaming, so a newer game that’s more demanding might further alienate their base.
A million sales is a lot, but it’s nothing compared to over 85 million copies sold that Sims 4 has achieved.
It sold almost 470,000 copies on PC in its first week 11 years ago. The number of PC gamers has dramatically increased since then, so comparing launch numbers between now and then isn’t really an apt comparison.
If you can’t fathom why I compare a game’s total sales to its competing newcomer, maybe you’re missing the whole point of the specific comment thread I responded to. If you want more recent numbers for a better comparison , EA claims they sold an additional 15 million copies in 2024 alone.
The main point is, I do not think EA is sweating quite yet. They’re a shitty, massive corporation and I’m sure they’ll pump out a sequel if they determine the newcomer is actively taking large enough chunks of their player base.
Small correction - they said they *gained *15 million players, not that they *sold *15 million new copies - the Sims 4 base game is free to play. Also, there was some recent backlash around how Inzoi handles LGBTQ characters and EA seemingly capitalized on that by releasing a big LGBTQ update for free, months ahead of pride month. So, they might be sweating it a little. But, Sims is on a whole other level culturally than a lot of games, it’s got a lot of players that play only the Sims franchise, and it’s been doing well enough to keep a steady stream of DLC coming out for years now.
Not to mention it would be a buggy mess, geared towards on-line only content and predatory gacha mechanics. Remember that abortion that was the last SimCity ? It pretty much gave Cities: Skylines a permission to print money.
Which is really unfortunate because The Sims 4 was my least favorite of the franchise. Probably only played it for about 20 hours over the years while I have hundreds in 2 and 3.
It was my favorite for artstyle/graphics, but I was not pleased when I tried to stir up drama by kissing a Sim’s partner in the same room. That would have gotten the partner racing over to slap someone, an argument, and a Furious status in The Sims 2. In The Sims 4, they just didn’t notice, no consequences.
You can simply not use any of the AI features. The studio claims the genAI is a model trained solely on material their artists and devs created for this exact purpose and it runs locally, and as far as I know there is nothing in the game that uses genAI other than what the players can generate.
I still don’t feel good supporting it, personally. If everyone else is enjoying it, that’s cool, but I’ve got plenty of other games that don’t dip their toes into areas I’m not personally comfortable with. So for me it’s a non starter.
Maybe see what player counts look like in a few months before making great and grand plans? People want a fresh take on The Sims, but maybe without the backlog of a hundred DLCs and other EA shittery. But, inZOI may not be it. Apart from the pervasive and distasteful use of generative AI, it may just not have that special something.
So give it a while, lads. Maybe it really will be a hit, but sales in the first week mostly just say that people wanted a fresh swing at The Sims, not that they really want what inZOI is.
Given how many features use generative AI to build user-generated content I would say mark this moment. There is a future of slop-centric Roblox stuff everywhere and this may well be where it starts.
I'm not as mad about that as most will be, but... yeah, I've mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
I appreciate it more because it’s generative AI based off of user created content and their own content. I respect that more than using outside sources that got their training data from god knows where and just slap that shit in there and call it a day.
How is it based on UGC if the game wasn't out when they implemented the GenAI? As far as I can tell they're using a whole bunch of ML-based tools built on Unreal tech for animation and model creation and what seems to be run of the mill Gen AI for textures. I could be wrong, but hey, I'll hold you to that being cool when EA or Ubisoft show up with their version of the same thing.
You can enter a text prompt and they spit out a texture based on it, which sure seems to just be a good old image generation model. They do generate mesh from images, which probably has some ML involved, although it's harder to tell how much is just good old photogrammetry, and they do face and body animation from video source. I think that's all part of the Unreal Engine 5 metahuman package, which I'm pretty sure does use some machine learning. Oh, and I am pretty sure a bunch of the writing and character AI has been machine-created, be it in real time or baked offline.
Part of the problem is that people aren't super clear on what "AI" is supposed to mean, so it's hard to know what they're supposed to be angry about. The texture generation thing at least is clearly in the GenAI danger zone.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times around here how weird it is that nobody is really bringing it up so far.
How many people are actually playing the game to find out though? I’m always strongly suspicious every time some new game explodes onto social media. Why couldn’t they use AI to generate user reviews and comments also?
There’s a lot of suspiciously crap games that manage to explode to the top of the steam trending list. I’ve been bitten before.
This one has art that looks so generic I can’t even tell if they’re screenshots or promo pics unrelated to the game. It suddenly makes sense now I know it’s genai. It’s not trying to communicate anything to a user it’s just vibes man.
I’m not a huge fan honestly. I think the stylized graphics are a better fit for the genre, and you get into uncanny valley a lot faster with realistic graphics.
But I mean, that’s just MY taste, I’m not going to tell anyone else what to think.
Higher fidelity for sure, as one would expect when comparing games released 10 years apart, but idk if it’s “better” per se. Of course this is totally subjective, but I feel like there’s no style to inZoi, unless we define “generic AI output” as a style.
They might have from me if the Steam Deck didn’t exist, but their advantage in the past was always being cheaper than the competition. I’m not interested in paying $400 $450 for a locked portable console.
I loved my switch. I spent a lot of time with it. But since getting the steam deck… All the things I can do with it, and the cheap games, and even the high end games that I can play, it’s just too good. I beat hollow knight on my PC. I bought a switch after that, bought hollow knight collectors and never played it. Was fully planning on buying silk song on the switch but now I think I’ll go for the steam version.
Even though I know lemmy is the minority of minority consumer sentiment, it gives me hope that this comment has a decent amount of upvotes in a nintendo post.
Seriously, fuck nintendo’s anti consumer bullshit.
I’m curious what other people’s main gripe is (likely emulation fights?) For my own, it’s when they enacted an assault on Garry’s Mod assets.
That domain never did anything to harm their brand and was a source for tons of fan content. Emulation has its murky arguments about capitalism, but going after GMod was just litigation and harm for its own sake.
Not sure how an animated series would work with Soma (the OG game has a clear beginning, middle and end), but I will agree with the subject of the article that Soma is a top 5 / top 10 best game of all time type experience.
You mean the live action web series? Yea I don’t understand how that series had better visuals than many blockbuster scifi movies rofl. It was extremely well done.
I have a confession to make, in the early parts of the game (before things got all psychedelic) I was almost a little bit disappointed due to my expectations from the web series, just a bit, the intro is also great.
There was something really unnerving about the web series. Even though there was nothing explicitly, it created a sense of dread, like something really wrong was going to happen.
Yea. It was really well done. I think it could totally be a TV show or a game. Idk if you feel this way but literally no game or movie or anything has ever made me feel as fucked up (in a good way) as SOMA did the first time I played it. I mean horror, philosophy, anger, sadness, denial. It had it all. I even made the same mistake that Simon makes where I totally didn’t want to believe that he would never really make it to the Ark (because copy paste, not cut paste.) It was just so good. Omg also the part where the guy is talking about killing yourself right after getting the scan…to obtain “continuity.” Absolutely crazy, even if the theory doesn’t make sense lol. I can see how in a moment of desperation that it could make sense to you.
I am right with you, Soma is easily a top 10 if not a top 5 gaming experience for me. And my top also includes games that I enjoy from a pure gameplay perspective (e.g. SimCity 4) which IMO aren’t comparable to Soma.
It was really well done, in the late game once I started figuring out what was going on I was like " Oh no, no, no! This can’t be happening!". A real sense of existential dread.
The ending was great too, a measure of positivity and hope, but very very far from a happy ending. A depressing ending with a possible ray of hope, depending on how one looks at it.
I just wish more people who aren’t into video games could experience Soma.
And the cool thing is that what Soma delivers cannot be done through a different medium. It has to be a video game, a book or even a movie wouldn’t really work in the same way. You have to be in control of your character.
Idk how much you dove into the lore, but have you ever read about the Carthage theory? There were some hints that Cathage Industries (who owned Pathos 2) were still around (they had other underwater facilities) and responsible for creating Simon and were monitoring the situation, sort of like Resident Evil Umbrella Corp style. Personally I’m not a huge fan of that theory as it takes away from the mood of the game, but it’s interesting and has a lot of merit.
Lemme know your thoughts. I see how it has merit and is possible but yeah, it totally kills the vibe. Maybe it was something the devs put in but ultimately abandoned, but kinda didn’t scrub it all out prior to release.
There’s audio logs in theta of someone trying to reach carthage for instructions. It’s obvious. What’s unclear is if she’s doing it out psychosis or actually knows they’re still around.
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Aktywne