There is currently a handful of devs doing the occational balance patch for SC2 otherwise the game is complelty dead from the developer side. On the MS side, AoE2 and other even older games are doing so much better.
And SS1 came out 29 years ago and just got a remaster. This isn’t a years-pissing context. Starcraft II was supported way long, and extensively. And like all good games, eventually the vast vast majority of players have moved on, and then the devs might move on, too.
The issue is not not players of devs, but the management that probably doesn’t think it’s profitable enough anymore. Yet, Microsoft manages to keep AoE2 going with an even smaller playerbase than SC2.
So MS taking over an abandon francise I care about sounds pretty sweet to me.
yes it does matter. These are businesses. They make money by selling things. You cannot compare one rereleasing the same game with minimal changes for new money to keep supporting an existing game without charging new money.
Isn't the expansion content between SCII's expansions and AoE2's expansions significantly different?
EDIT: the last one was 3 races (note: races are significantly less diverse in AoE2 vs in SC2) and 3 campaigns, each with 6 maps each
I feel like the Co-OP commanders they added fairly frequently would constitute roughly the same amount of race content. Campaign content not so much but the main campaign of each SC2 expansion is 26 stages, not including branching paths.
Not that much. Yes, AoE2 usually adds new factions, that won’t happen in StarCraft II. But introducing new units or reworking existing one is possible.
Adding singleplayer mission is pretty mich the same.
Also the Co-op mode of SC2 is quite popular and there is room to add a “new factions” there.
But do they need the games to be good? Activions sucks balls, but why would microsoft make the games good again and remove all the shit with microtransactions etc.?
I haven’t played it but I have read that Diablo 4 has been mostly well received. I guess there’s been a fiasco about one of the updates to it, but that’s not something unique to Blizzard and theoretically could be fixed in another update, no?
Me too, I know it’s not a popular opinion on here (for good reason) but this should put more pressure on PlayStation and drive competition there, make gsmepass more attractive and hopefully shake things up at Activision blizzard which could go either way, but worth the risk given how shitnthey currently are.
Let’s hope they can chew what they’ve attempted to eat. They can barely manage their first party studios, and now they’re going to attempt to manage one of the biggest publisher/studio.
I mean yeah, that’s how acquisitions and exclusivity works. It’s not like PlayStation bought Bungie to lose money or make exclusivity deals with third parties to bring games to Xbox. That’s just how this industry works.
By manage I mean, they’re gonna handle so many companies without a good track record of being able to do it. To make the money from King they will need to be able to retain talent and steward its properties properly.
they’re gonna handle so many companies without a good track record of being able to do it. To make the money from King they will need to be able to retain talent and steward its properties properly.
No they don't. As we've already seen, MS doesn't have to do anything in regards to development. Promotion, marketing will get a boost but they can be hands off most of the technical details and still make bank. Bethesda, King and Activision are all quite profitable on their own. Now they simply can't develop for Sony and they get distributed on Game Pass day 1.
Also, exclusionary buy-outs are bad for the market and should not have been allowed. MS buying up huge game competitors and then restricting their choice on which platforms to develop for is clearly anti-competitive behavior.
You’re right, they’ve been hands off and basically done bare minimum for marketing and promotion. And it hasn’t been working well for them at all, exhibit A: Halo Infinite, exhibit B: Redfall. Clearly they can’t sustain this anymore.
Starfield has been probably the first example where they actually got invested in the production, delayed a game by a year, got their entire QA team test it. Layoffs from top to bottom at 343 is probably another example of them intervening.
Regarding exclusionary buyouts, I don’t know if you aren’t aware of it. But it has been a thing in this industry for decades. This is how Sony got where it is today, by being highly competitive by making exclusionary deals and buying studios with whom they had exclusionary deals with for years. Sony entered this industry out of nowhere and bought their way into success, and everyone agrees that only made the market more competitive. Xbox had no games and was not bringing competition in market, and now that it has more games, it’s anti competitive?
The difference with MSFT is that they bring their games to PC (an open platform) via Steam, and to Xbox, along with a price accessible service of GamePass, so it doesn’t force a gamer into first buying a $400 console and then a $70 game to play on it.
We can agree to disagree, my original point is primarily around lack of confidence in MSFT’s ability to manage these studios and do justice to their legacy. Sure making workspaces less toxic and inclusive for everyone is a massive win, but will employees stick around under a new management that seems pretty incompetent to eff up their own flagship series (Halo).
No way Microsoft let’s that happen. He’ll be forced out. The only reason Microsoft looked into this consolidation is because he was running the company value into the core of the earth.
Of all the games to choose to remaster they decided on Oblivion and not Morrowind? Man, Bethesda couldn’t confirm how out of touch they are even harder if they tried
I can kinda see why they went with Oblivion. For one, Morrowind would be harder to do because it relies heavily on invisible dice rolls and she stats of you vs the enemy for…basically everything. From hit chance, to if your spell is succesfully cast, to how much damage your armor (or the enemy’s) eats up. Unless they gut that entire system and do a more modernized one instead (like Oblivion/Skyrim’s)
Another reason i wanna say they picked Oblivion is because, frankly, it’s the middle redhead child of the “modern” elder scrolls main games. Everyone praises Morrowind and Skyrim, but Oblivion…yeah. I love it, it was what Skyrim was to many players, but yeah it can be rough in a lot of aspects. Sometimes even more so than Morrowind (YMMV. I could easily get used to Morrowind, even vanilla. Everytime i go back to Oblivion, I have to make myself look past the roughness to see the good stuff).
IDK, i see this as a great second chance for the game…and, foolish it may be but, I’m also hoping they restore Cyrodiil to the jungle it was hyped up to be in Morrowind and the pocket guides since the tech is there now, plus they no longer have to cash in on the Lord of the Rings movies. They won’t. But i can dream.
It’s not so much the dice rolls that are the problem…but, they kinda are…let me try and explain what i mean
It isn’t so much that going back to Morrowind’s style of gameplay is a bad thing. Like you said, a lot of games do that and do it well, even today (Baldur’s Gate 3 does Dice Rolls for everything too, and its great) it’s more of is Bethesda going to keep it intact (either completely or modernize it) and risk potentially alienating the part of the fans that have only played Skyrim (A large part of players, at least from what I’ve seen) or are they going to scrap it and replace it with a more Oblivion/Skyrim system, thus potentially alienating the ones that are wanting an Elder Scrolls game to go back to when there were tangiable RPG mechanics in there (and that’s not assuming they don’t try and have it both ways…IDK how that’d look, but if you try pleasing everyone, well…).
Did that make sense? I’m kinda running on an energy drink and a dream atm
But really, i think it’s more of they looked at Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, and just went “out of those 3, Oblivion’s the one that could use the tuneup the most” (again, it’s the redhead middle child, sandwiched between the much more universally loved Skyrim and respected older Morrowind).
My big point here is that Bethesda isn’t aware of what their fan base enjoys. There are plenty of people who have played their games who are not fans. When I say fan what I’m talking about is the kind of people who play all of their games throughout history. You garner good will with your community by catering to the desires of the fan base itself. that said even if they wanted to do the most money grabbiest thing they could it would still make more sense to start with 3 and work their way toward 5 again. It would give them more games to monotize and would also let them build hype for the games that did penetrate the general audience
I don't think they're interested in gatekeeping which group of their customers are considered "fans", nor do I think it's them that's out of touch. I know Morrowind is the cult classic, but Oblivion just does better numbers.
What’s most disappointing about this aside from the negative impacts it has on consumers with no benefits is how it shows what a grip Microsoft has on uk entities. This has been a problem for decades. Microsoft is one of those companies that has its tendrils all throughout the uk, and they can get whatever they want. Even when what they want is in opposition to decisions made by authorities specifically designed to block this kind of thing.
It sounds like the issue the regulator had was something specific to cloud game streaming, and Microsoft addressed that.
The CMA had originally blocked the acquisition over cloud gaming concerns, but Microsoft recently restructured the deal to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft.
yes that’s mechanism where you see microsoft get what they want. they do a platitude that doesn’t affect them, that they generally won’t even bother to enforce. because the regulatory body can’t just say “they made us do this by talking to someone higher up that said we had to do this”
the CMA never goes back on decisions like this, their decision is final and you can only fight it by going to the courts and the courts will only rule on if it was legal for the CMA to make the decision, not on the validity of the decision.
Curious to see the differences between the "real" plans and the leaked ones. Obviously, some of the dates are off since some of those games haven't been released yet and I have a hard time believing Elder Scrolls 6 is coming out next year. I could see some of those games being canceled, but it's hard to see plans around the midgen refresh changing up too much. It makes sense to have something to compete with the PS5 Pro that Sony is probably going to release next year and an all-digital Series X would be a good way to test the waters for going completely digital next generation.
A lot of the planned release dates got pushed back a year or two because of covid, so add a year to each date to get closer to when things are probably going to actually come out, I reckon.
I haven’t heard about any plans for PS5 Pro, but all that leaks have said what’s coming out is more like a Slim, since it’s going to be smaller, and not have a built-in disk drive. We’ll see, tho.
Not very. Negotiating and executing a deal of that size and complexity cross cutting major national, cultural, and business universes would be extremely difficult
I’m sure they could have a partnership with them without having to purchase them. They could just fund some games for console exclusivity or something similar.
Yeah, look at how almost every game in the Yakuza become permanent residents on Game pass. One of the next game will even be on GP on day 1. They must be in a very good relationship
At least it would be TRYING to have more reach to consumers.
Nintendo’s strategy of only appealing to kids and only sometimes caring about it’s actual, much larger fanbase isn’t really economically estrategic if you think about it.
Because they sell their products at overpriced numbers and their current console is built on 8 year old hardware that even it’s chip makers said it was “outdated” back in 2015.
Yeah, and it's sold more units than the PS5 and all iterations of the current XBox combined, at a profit on every unit. Nobody's out there holding a gun to people's heads to buy the Switch, but they sell FAR more than either of their competitors in both hardware AND software. It sounds to me like you're not actually angry at Nintendo, but angry at the majority of customers in the game industry that don't share your disdain for less powerful hardware.
The hardware is weak, but the market has spoken and to them at least, it doesn't matter. If it DID matter, people wouldn't buy them. Why would Nintendo spend the extra money when consumers have already decided they're going to buy it in droves anyway? So they can spend more on manufacturing and make less profit? Yes, they wanted easy cash. What responsible company doesn't? It doesn't make any sense to spend a dime more on producing a product than what your customers demand. The limitations of the Switch are the fault of consumers who buy it, not Nintendo's. If Microsoft could sell the same number of units Nintendo can by making a game system that cost $50 to manufacture and ran on 386, you can be damn sure they would too. I completely understand your anger - I've had to spend the last 20 years watching flocks of people buy inferior, overpriced Apple products and rave about how great they are. But like Nintendo, Apple only does it because the consumers let them get away with it. Your complaint is misdirected when it should be targeted at the customer base. But good luck teaching happy people who don't know any better that the thing they like is bad. It's not a great use of your time.
All of your other problems are perfectly reasonable, but if you think Microsoft's plan if they buy Nintendo is to drop everything and start porting old titles or working on a new Starfox game, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Like Disney buying Star Wars, get ready for annual, mediocre entries in your favorite series cranked out by a revolving door of existing teams to maximize output. After a couple years of half-baked Mario and Zelda games, they'll stop selling in the numbers Microsoft wants, and after the golden goose is dead, they'll dissolve any remaining Nintendo assets into their larger acquisitions structure, lay off a bunch, and put the name in the vault while they look for something else to cannibalize.
So like the vast majority of PCs still run on 1060 instead of whatever the latest shit is? Sounds pretty reasonable, especially if you want mobile gaming.
I wish they’d make the drive an optional add-on that you could buy later if you decide that digital only isn’t for you, instead of using it as product segmentation. But that would be pro-consumer, so not gonna happen.
That’s problematic because you can resell disks. I suppose they could sign disks independently and then only allow one digital owner, but then you’d need a formal process every time you resell, or worse, disallow reselling, and the cost for producing disks would go away up (not to mention returns would be a headache).
Another benefit of having an external disk drive is that you can replace it if yours goes bad. I’m not sure what’s going to “end in tears,” it would work just like any other USB device, you plug it in and the console could load games from it.
But yeah, an all digital console makes no sense to me, unless it’s an interesting form factor like a handheld or an arcade cabinet. So the only console I have is a Switch, and everything else is on PC.
I was all for physical copies for years. And I get why people still would be because they have massive collections. But honestly now I’ve got the disc drive ps5 version and it hasn’t been used at all. Granted I only play like 3 or 4 games at a time for a long time, but every game I’ve bought has been digital.
Plus, your point of being able to replace the drive is huge (to me atleast) because every console I’ve had the drive went first; they were also super out of warranty. So I get why people want built in drives but it’s just one less port that’s going to breaks that also less and less people are going to want or need.
Lastly cause im like weighting a thesis or something haha but I bought a 4tb external hard drive that’s plugged in the back of the ps5 that holds everything I could want if the internet went dark. And I can throw that in the microwave incase of a solar storm so
Will that drive still work on the PS6? Will it work in 20 years? Can you buy more games after a Sony has shutdown the digital store? Can you sell your digital purchases if you don’t want them anymore?
Those are the kinds of problems physical media solves.
I buy digital media on my PC and physical media on my consoles, because PC games aren’t hardware specific whereas console games are.
I fear more and more games will become like BG3, digitally exclusive. I asked for it for my birthday and was told the game didn’t exist for PS5. I was confused, as I most certainly have been reading reviews, then I found out it’s only digital and thats why no one saw a copy.
I wish I could forget oblivion so I could experience it the first time again. Emerging from prison after that long tutorial. Spending hours in complicated oblivion gates.
spoiler___Realizing that Martin is the protagonist and you’re a side character
The vibrations a speaker can produce could be very useful for haptic feedback. If this is a speaker modified for that purpose with a thicker, heavier membrane I think it would work very well
Think like Nintendo’s HD rumble. There’s certain patterns it can do that make it sound like… sound. In Golf Story for example, the hits with the club, with the hd rumble on, you can perfectly hear the skins of hitting a club even with the audio of the game down. It’s strange and great at the same time. The steam controller also used it for those turn on, turn off jingles you could have on, they also sound great.
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Aktywne