At least Sony had some justification. A new and expensive cell architecture. It was ground breaking for its time but cost too much.
Nintendo is giving us something the steam deck and other pc handhelds can do, and trying to charge $80 for games that will almost never go on sale. I can buy old steam titles for less than $10, show me an old Nintendo title that can ever sell for that amount. It’s just not a good enough proposition just to have access to a handful of $80 Nintendo titles.
Yeah, I could stomach the price of the console, but no way am I ever going to pay those outrageous prices that never go down for first party games, and without those there’s no point in getting a Switch 2 over a Steam Deck. I’ll have a lot of Nintendo games to catch up on once decent Switch 2 emulators are a thing.
It will probably need to run DLSS ultra performance mode to do 1440p@60fps. So that image will look like shit since it would upscale from a 480p base resolution.
If you ever wonder why gamers buy Playstation and not Xbox, here is your reason.
MS have no idea what they’re doing with gaming. There will be no The Last of Us or God of War coming from them. They don’t want to sell you games. They want to sell you GamePass. They don’t want you to have a great time. They want you to have a time that is just about acceptable enough to keep paying for it.
The only one of their games I’ve heard people get excited about is Hi-Fi Rush, and you can see here what they think of that. Clearly it didn’t maintain enough Monthly Active Users, or have a short enough Time To Purchase or whatever other bullshit mobile-era metric determines whether a studio lives or dies.
And this is WHY the smaller studios are on the chopping block and not core Bethesda.
Because smaller games that are incredibly solid don’t matter. What matters are AAA tentpoles. And Tango’s A/AA games were “lukewarm” at best. They had an AMAZING B/A game but fuck 'em. Same with Arkane Austin
And… probably same with Obsidian this fall (?) when their Elder Pillars game comes out and people decide it isn’t Skyrim so it is bad. Ignore that Pentiment was amazing or their long legacy as one of the best studios in CRPGs. People will just talk doom and gloom because it isn’t The Last Of Us.
Which will lead to MS continuing to try to be Sony rather than take advantage of the studios they actually have. And people will continue to talk about how they can’t compete with Sony because they don’t have a Horizon Zero Dawn.
I’ve been saying it ever since MS started buying every studio they could. They have an AMAZING roster and can basically dominate the market by “flooding” it with high production value “indie” games. But… people want their AAA tentpoles.
This is such a fanboy opinion. Sony killed basically their entire Japanese Development, had 13 GaaS in development at the same time and actively are holding back the standard of Cross Save. They give plenty of reasons to not be the ‘gamer’ console. Especially now when they are also beginning to drop games on gamepass.
Ironically we still know of more single player games coming to Xbox then games coming to Sony outside of Spider-Man Leaks.
Fallout is currently the hottest game on the market thanks to the Show on top of this.
This really fucking sucks but damn stop trying to use this as a way to promote your team
If anything, Nintendo is likely the company about to make lightning strike twice with the Switch successor due to be announced this year. Will be interesting to see what it’s like, but no matter the case, it is going to sell like hotcakes.
Sony’s Japan studio’s own library was always gimmicky games that were basically tech demos- Ape Escape was for the Dual Analog controller, LocoRoco for the PSP, Gravity Rush for the Vita, Knack to be a pack-in for the PS4, and games for VR, Move Eye toy, etc. In fact it’s kind of hard to find games they did on their own because they’ve always been mostly a support studio even going back to the PS1’s launch lineup, and they are continuing that. There have been several studios that make original games that started as part of Sony Japan that have been spun off into separate teams too.
I’m struggling to think of many studios Sony has closed. Sony London studios was similar to Japan- mostly just games to go with hardware gimmicks like the EyeToy, SingStar, and Wonderbook. It’s even harder to find studios that Sony has purchased and then closed or turned into a support studio- I guess you could count that Psygnosis was purchased and merged into London studios back in the 90’s, but considering they went 20 years between that merger and closing I doubt there were many Psygnosis devs left there.
A quick search pulls up PixelOpus, a tiny studio Sony formed from 9 college grads with a couple of industry veterans to lead them They released 2 small games and were closed last year.
I don’t mean to be too defensive of Sony- they did close one of their own studios and laid off ~900 people this year. But it’s not really a comparison to Microsoft who now has a long history of buying 3rd party studios, mismanaging them, and closing them.
I’m also confused about your comment about Xbox making more single player games than Sony. First of all… I would expect that to generally be true. It looks like Sony owns 21 studios while Microsoft had 40 as of the Activision-Blizzard acquisition. And while a lot hasn’t been announcedwith release dates, we know of a handful of single player games Sony has in the works- Horizon 3, TLOU3, Ghosts of Tsushima 2, and new IP’s from Bend, Housemarq, and BluePoint. Plus Wolverine, and you could argue whether Physint should count or not since that’s a partnership between Kojima and Sony-owned Columbia Pictures. If you’re trying to imply that Sony is abandoning single-player games or something that’s pretty far from the truth.
Eh. Can't say I had fun watching my higher end weapon break on the stronger, bullet sponge enemies later on, and replacing it with a crappy short swords that do barely any damage. ToTK though was certainly better thanks to fusion.
That it kind of the thing tho, if you just violently smash your sword around, it's gonna break. Like katanas are pretty flimsy and a german greatsword for example could just snap it off. Let's take elden ring for example and you use your sword to find an invisible wall, that's terrible for a sword and it would go to shit really quick. So i guess in a way it's realistic. But i really don't like it when games do that. All it does for me is that i'm never going to use the nice things in the game, because they break, then you need a new one or repair it or whatever.
I'm fine with encumbrance... especially in these Bethesda games. All they do is litter the world with garbage for the player to pick up and carry around for no reason other than make the game longer.
“There is literally no reason to buy this handheld,” Fryer opined of the ROG Xbox Ally. "
You want access to games or services that are either better or only available on Windows without having to deal with the desktop Windows interface. That is literally the reason to buy it. Game Pass and popular live services can woo plenty of people over.
Gotta say, from the few times I’ve come across her channel, she seems like a shit-stirrer, and right wing rage baiters seem to love quoting her.
But what is the long-term plan?
To transition to a world where “Xbox” is the brand slapped across Microsoft’s Windows gaming endeavors and they mostly serve as a Game Pass purveyor and the largest third party publisher by market cap.
Where are the new hits?
This one is really surprising as a question, because if you could will hits into existence, everyone would do it, but for a publisher of their size, they’re doing more in recent years to create new franchises than most, even if they then lay off the team behind Hi-Fi Rush. South of Midnight came out this year; Outer Worlds 2, Avowed, and Grounded all came out of Obsidian as well as the much smaller Pentiment; and Clockwork Revolution got a sizable demo on display just this summer.
That Xbox would become Microsoft’s Steam has been the prevailing prediction for the better part of 10 years. I am immediately dubious of anybody who’s opinion is that a more capable than the Xbox device (as far as availability of games) has no reason to be purchased.
You want access to games or services that are either better or only available on Windows without having to deal with the desktop Windows interface. That is literally the reason to buy it. Game Pass and popular live services can woo plenty of people over.
What would that be exactly? Gamepass already works great on linux, it’s a better experience on my steam deck than fighting with my windows laptop.
It seems like the main audience is people who are scared of Linux and just don’t want to learn something new.
That’s fair, it is streaming only at the moment. I had honestly forgotten, I don’t play much that really needs perfect latency, so I’ve just been enjoying streaming on mine for months now.
Co-CEO Mark Gerhard had hit the headlines ahead of MindsEye’s launch for claiming there was a “concerted effort” by some to “trash the game and the studio,” suggesting people were being paid or using spam bots to post negative comments.
The people who made the decisions which led them to this troubled state do not understand or accept that they are the reason hundreds are going to lose their jobs. “Paid actors” seems to be the big push back against criticism but no one knows how much these jobs pay or where to find one. I want to make some money for not buying crap!
I am seeing more and more of these “review bomb” takes lately, too. Dragon Age Veilguard getting review bombed because their game is too woke. Moon Studios saying they might have to close because trolls are review bombing their new game. Monster Hunter Wilds being review bombed on Steam because entitled PC gamers expect their games to be stable, I guess.
Too many people out there are deflecting legitimate criticism in favor of what are basically conspiracy theories—that there must be a concerted effort to specifically punish these developers in particular for the crime of releasing a misunderstood masterpiece. No one wants to accept the possibility that they just put out a bad game.
I mean, I’m sure these jobs exist, social media manipulation is neither new or difficult. They’re probably outsourced to India or somewhere though.
But it’s a bit of a pathetic excuse for bad managers to use to cover their failing. I think they should have some sort of evidence before they start squawking about it.
Outsourcing is such a pre-AI mentality. Why have foreign loose ends that don’t speak the language well and give off amateurish vibes when a few computers and some AI credits will do it faster, better, and cheaper?
It’s even more funny, or sad really, given that most of these studios are paying people to promote these games, without any of the legally required disclosures of course.
Those incongruously positive opinions disappearing after a few days is totally normal and definitely not because they were only being paid for a 1 week window around the launch of the game.
On the one hand I hate hearing about people losing their jobs. I dislike people not being able to have an opportunity to support themselves. On the other hand any and all trouble for EA makes me happy. I long for the day they have to sell off their studios and their CEO has to try and not be remembered as the guy that killed the golden goose for investor capitol.
It’s time that investors stop looking at video games as a get rich quick opportunity. And trying to turn it into the new cubicle farm. Sandfall and a lot of other smaller devs are proving that a small team of generalists are able to do better work than these huge and bloated monstrosities that EA and its kind have become.
Also they pretty much show with this and several other cancellations that they cannot fathom a business model that doesn’t rely on predator monetization.
Damn I was looking forward to this, Marc Bernardin was a writer for it, in fact I believe the lead writer. Love his stuff, found him by following Kevin Smith
I’d really rather gamers focused their energy into showing support for the developer groups making cool projects, than specifically deriding any works made under publishers they dislike.
Once every few years, EA and Ubisoft produce something that’s really cool; and much as we’d rather the publishers were replaced with better ones, at the least we can be happy that developers got to put out one or two good games through them.
I’d really rather gamers focused their energy into showing support for the developer groups making cool projects, than specifically deriding any works made under publishers they dislike.
The thing about EA is they have a long history of acquiring the developer groups you’re talking about, then mismanaging them into the ground before dissolving them entirely. I know just as many if not more only exist because of EA and their funding, but it’s hard not to feel bitter when many of my favorite studios no longer exist due to their incompetence and greed.
You underestimate just how much they treat this like a business and take advantage of passionate people. Nobody does game dev for a career without a passion.
These companies are told by analysts that it’s always better to have the players make the content for them.
That’s why PVP games are always free-to-play and co-op games “require” each player to buy their own copy (so now you have to do the companies’ dirty work for them by convincing your friends to spend money.) It’s all fucked, and it’s all about following the money.
It’s published by Epic (Control was published by 505). Unless Epic significantly compromises on their insistence of pushing the Epic store, it wont happen.
Bit of awkward phrasing, but the commentator was not talking about Steam exclusivity - rather having it available on Steam (in addition to wherever else it was available).
Clearer wording may be “if only it had been on Steam”.
I think going by overall mainstream appeal and zeitgeist it’s correct. Everybody was talking about BG3 that year, even people who are usually not fans of the genre. So in that sense I agree that 2023 was the year of BG3.
On the games’ merit alone as standalone pieces of art abstracted from context I think Alan Wake 2 puts up a good fight.
Yeah, last year was not a weak year. There was a new highly-regarded Zelda game as well, which is easy to forget when Baldur’s Gate 3 won every award so unanimously.
Remedy games have been “underperforming” despite rave reviews for a while. Yet they’ve been chugging along doing what they think is neat, instead of caving into the current money-making models.
And in this case, the Epic partnership definitely hurt the game. And they know it did. Before AW2, it was microsoft putting the breaks of Quantum Break despite it being great.
Control was the first time since Max Payne I felt they truly achieved the success that their level of quality deserves (and even then it was a timed epic exclusive).
Now Remedy has set themselves up to finally self-publish the follow-up to Control. I can’t wait.
Remedy has fans, but something always seems to get in the way.
We know one of their WIP titles is a PvE multiplayer game set in their connected universe. Aside from that, nothing more is known, except for your generic corporate “we’re excited about our future projects with Remedy” statements from 505.
I’d be very suprised if Remedy turns around and makes it overtly exploitative.
Whether it’s any more exploitative than any other game, it’s still got all of the same baggage. It’s always online and will one day be unplayable, and it’s relying on continual revenue to support it rather than just selling it for an up front price and letting it rock, which both encourage exploitative monetization anyway.
Ok. Unfortunately it sounds like you’re asking me to stop liking a studio that I like, based on speculation about how a future title of theirs might work. That’s not an actionable argument.
Nothing about a multiplayer title requires it be made in a way that will break whenever the official servers go down. You are assuming this one will work that way, and I’ll grant you it likely will.
But the change we both want isn’t going to come from voting with our wallets, but even harder.
I’m not asking you to stop liking a studio you like, but I am asking you to take them off of the pedestal you put them on. If you care about the SKG campaign, that new shooter of theirs is at odds with it.
That pedestal being, that they keep making games that are just plain good, despite at the same time being involved with shit industry practices by working with Microsoft and Epic?
I think that particular pedestal is pretty fucking deserved. And one that looks their faults in the eyes.
They keep making good stuff, while marred by the bullshit that allows them to fund the studio.
Why do you think I’m specifically excited for them to finally do something fully self-published, so they can make something I can enjoy with no fucking strings attached?
I’d be good if it was a game set in the universe where you’re a bender but not one of the main cast. For example if you’re in the fire nation you’re in the military and may have run ins with them. Same with the other tribes. You could do unique situations for each element and not be tied to the main characters
Perhaps they should just move to an earlier point of time in the universe so a lot more possibilities could open up. They could even make it an MMO kind of game with the different factions, the setting would lend itself quite well for it.
There is an Avatar TTRPG and it faces similar problems to making a new game based on the series, and handles it similarly to what you’re suggesting.
The TTRPG divides the setting into Eras, Kyoshi era with the nations still being established, Roku era with established nations, The Hundred Years War era taking place during the war but before Ang wakes, The Aang era, after the show and its sequel comics, and the Kora era taking place after TLoK and its comic trilogy. Notably, none take place during the events of the main series. This means that the can create new stories that better fit the medium and don’t break cannon, and at the same time, you can still interact with significant characters and tie your story into the cannon such as making a quest resulting from the reprocusions of, or a prerequisite for events in the main canon.
Edit: clearly none of us read the article:
It’ll put players in the role of an “all-new, never-before-seen Avatar” and take place thousands of years in the past.
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