Honestly if you read the actual email I think there could be significant legal trouble ahead.
Spencer talks about how the main barrier to acquiring Nintendo is that they sit on a mountain of cash. He calls that unfortunate. He then proceeded to state a company with connections to Microsoft had just bought a lot of Nintendo shares, and how they could work with said company to make such an acquisition a reality.
The company in question publicly bought a massive amount of Nintendo shares. They then proceeded to pressure Nintendo to invest more capital instead of sitting on the cash pile they have now. They did this under claims that such a move would be beneficial to Nintendo in terms of ROI. However, it would also result in Nintendo being more vulnerable to an acquisition from Microsoft if any of those bets don’t pay off.
In short, it could be argued that Microsoft worked with investors to tank Nintendo so they could buy it. That’s a huge deal and will probably result in a shitstorm.
In short, it could be argued that Microsoft worked with investors to tank Nintendo so they could buy it. That’s a huge deal and will probably result in a shitstorm.
I mean, Nintendo selling shares of their company is a specific decision they have made. Do you think they are confused that people other than Nintendo employees are buying these shares? Or that the investors would have an agenda other than just being "Nintendo fans"?
Investors generally want to get a positive ROI. They don’t want to tank the company to the point where it can be acquired by another company for pennies on the dollar.
Look at Nokia. When they hired a former Microsoft exec, they weren’t expecting him to tank the entire company so it could be acquired by Microsoft.
But Bethesda could very well release a Skyrim Extra Special Edition in the interim, and fans will lap it up, no doubt. Jokes aside, there are many large fan-projects in the works which fans are looking forward to, such such as OpenMW, Skyblivion and Skywind, not to mention more “normal” mods for Skyrim itself, so I doubt the interest in the franchise is going away any time soon.
Haptic feedback has everyone. How does it differ in any form from other controllers.
Pretty sure only the Switch and PS5 Controllers have something unique to vibration motors
Gyro is imo a bit of a gimmick.
Same as the adaptive triggers from the PS5 and the HD rumble from the switch and the Kinect from the Xbox 360/One.
They are all pretty cool but how many devs will actually implement it?
HD rumble: Sure, there are party games but those are 1st party (usually) and what purpose do they offer besides the few haptic feedbacks?
Adaptive trigger: I see two options. Racing or Archery. Maybe the odd platformer.
Kinect: Basically a Wiimote and a WiiFit - the scale. It had a few neat titles but basically useless unless you like the swish around in the dashboard.
So what purpose does the gyro serves outside of more expensive hardware the majority of devs will not utilize. Am I really missing out on something?
Those are exactly the types of games that most benefit from gyro controls. You still use the right joystick to look around like normal, but then you also have gyro to make fine adjustments on top of that.
I hope it actually has gyros, so XBOX can finally get gyro aim. I don’t play on XBOX, but maybe support for that in XBOX controllers would make devs more inclined to support it. But the document only mentions an accelerometer.
Also, what’s up with controllers dropping face button colors? The PS5 did the same thing.
Also, what’s up with controllers dropping face button colors? The PS5 did the same thing.
From an aesthetic standpoint it just looks better^1 , and by now gaming consoles are so Mainstream that the additional accessibility the colors offer is not a good enough reason to keep them anymore.
^1 subjective, of course, but if you look at modern, big corporate design a lot of it is trending towards minimalism, very little use of color, etc.
Why do people behave as if Starfield was the first game not released on PlayStation?
Who is doing that? It's just blatantly obvious that it would've been released on PlayStation without Microsoft meddling and their games sell a shitload, I mean Skyrim has been chugging along over a decade now. So I'm not really sure how Starfield is irrelevant to Ms buying shit conversation.
It's not what being an exclusive means (let not get into linguistics here, I mean strictly the gaming industry term). I agree this specific case was anticompetitive but framing it as an exclusive just weakens this point in my opinion and allows to shift the debate away from it.
Away from what? Everyone knows what it means -- or maybe I don't, please enlighten me in that case.
It's more like a default platform seeing as even former PlayStation exclusives are slowly getting a PC release as well. And I did call Starfield Xbox/PC exclusive, not just Xbox.
It's probably not the word to describe what's getting released where and stems from marketing but it's commonly used in gaming so most understand its meaning.
PC is another of MS’s platforms with Windows. No shit they’re ok with their games being released on it when consumers are paying over a $100 for a Windows license every few years.
I do find it a little interesting that Phil Spencer is ignoring the content of the leaks and instead just focusing on the fact the documents are out of date. I would imagine the contents of the leaks are likely still pretty close to accurate, even if plans have changed a little, as a result.
I also wonder if Xbox will use the reaction to the leaks to determine potential changes going forward (ie: reactions to the console being all digital, reactions to the next gen console processor, etc).
Ideally, you would have internal PR and crisis comms draft such a mailing, because you plan that it gets leaked. He probably saw it once to sign off on, but it was writen by comms.
You generally don’t want to confirm leaks as being true, so you’ll either not say anything about it (this was an internal memo, not a public post) or you’ll say something along the lines of “These things are subject to change and don’t reflect the final product”
I also wonder if Xbox will use the reaction to the leaks to determine potential changes going forward (ie: reactions to the console being all digital, reactions to the next gen console processor, etc).
Almost certainly, make lemonade and all that, it can be very valuable feedback it just wouldn’t have been worth telegraphing your 5 year plan.
“headed”. if it wasn’t for them being scared about the activision blizzard deal not being hand waved through like it was, there wouldn’t have been the 2020-2022 pause too. that’ll get right back on track now. Microsoft does deals for acquisitions in feb targetting june for completion normally so about then.
Imagine having specific months every year where you prepare to break and then break (if not the letter then definitely the spirit of) antitrust laws and most people either don’t know or pretend that there’s nothing wrong with it 🤬
Am not sure EC would let that one slide as they really like multiple companies competing for same slice of market. That way everyone benefits. Microsoft was already kicked in the teeth for Office and browsers back in the day for trying to dominate the market.
I don‘t support Microsoft in any way but it is kinda funny that some PlayStation Users seem to feel personally attacked that Microsoft starts to do all the exclusivity shit that Sony has done for ages. Quit treating the whole thing as a team thing - a my team vs. that other team thing. Sony AND Microsoft are companies that will both fuck you over within the blink of an eye if it will make them money or damage the other company.
I don‘t support Microsoft in any way but it is kinda funny that some PlayStation Users seem to feel personally attacked that Microsoft starts to do all the exclusivity shit that Sony has done for ages. Quit treating the whole thing as a team thing - a my team vs. that other team thing.
I don’t even own a PlayStation so why should I quit anything? In fact, I’m a PC gamer running Windows. I can make my dumb jokes as often as I like and when I want to make fun of the fact that both Microsoft and Bethesda claimed before the acquisition that it was not about removing cross-platform support for Bethesda games and Microsoft also claims to “❤️ Linux”, you cannot stop me, even if you’d like to.
I also find it hilarious that Microsoft apologists claim that “that Sony has done the same for ages” which is factually untrue. Sony hardly ever bought cross-platform games in-house for PlayStation exclusivity (maybe the would of they had enough spare money but they don’t). Sony also releases plenty of games for Microsoft platforms, including MLB The Show, Horizon, Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank, God of War, etc. Heck, the recently announced Marathon reboot is confirmed to come to Xbox and not just PlayStation and Microsoft Windows. Much of my PC gaming in recent years was spent playing Sony games on Windows.
I bought a PS5 because my old XBone was on the fritz, and the series x wasn’t available at the time… plus hardware failure from the Xbone made me lean towards Sony anyway. Hard-core console gamers also helped push me into it as well… “who cares about Halo, you will be able to play all the good games on either console”.
I have no team, and now I kind of regret even buying a console at all, it’s only real feature for me is it has a fast boot up time lol. Every other article about a new game seems to be a kick in the nuts to console owners.
What’s the benefit of Steam deck vs something like Ally ROG? Genuine question, I have no horse in the race. (I can’t even find as much time as I wished to game in my free time at home, I am definitely not going to spend book reading time on subpar gaming)
They don’t need to make one; they can use one of the many engines that already exist and can do everything their games try to do, but with far less jank. Unless they somehow manage to insert it in regardless, which I would not put past them.
Yeah, exactly. They’ve created a viable ecosystem for themselves. They have a highly moddable engine and they tend to leave a lot of abandoned code in the game that modders find and make use of. People eat it up and they use it as a starting point to get into development.
I’m on exactly that track right now. For me it’s been all about very open ended kinda buggy games that you can mod the hell out of. Wanting to change or tweak a little something here and there leads to wanting to implement more elaborate ideas. Eventually it starts looking appealing to make something of your own, or to make a bigger contribution to other projects. Personally, I don’t really want to work for a big company (or anyone other than myself), but a modding portfolio can certainly be a foot in the door.
My first mod for a game was a thing to shut up the Longs in Fallout 4. Super simple, literally just broke the link to their idle audio files. That was ages ago, and my own journey has been more related to getting DayZ to do what I want and now using Conan to further explore game design and more involved elaborate systems, but Bethesda was still that first step.
They’re not perfect, and their IP in some cases has certainly been watered down a little, but they make great games and have a workable business model that isn’t as toxic as some others. They’ve done a good job fostering creativity and innovation.
I don’t really get the complaints by people who’ve never made anything even remotely approaching a Fallout or an Elder Scrolls acting like the developers are trash and they know better. Let’s see your blockbuster open world rpg.
No? What I mean is they have a massive more casual audience that doesn’t play a lot of games to compare it to and this is true. Yes most people who regularly play games can enjoy Bethesda games too but they don’t owe their success to that audience cause if they did they would stop selling reskinned skyrim.
Or they can keep using the same engine with the same issues because gamers will definitely buy their next title en-masse despite the previously mentioned issues. Eg. Starfield
They tend to do that by tacking on new jank without removing (much) of the old stuff, though, presumably because they have base assets and scripts that they’re constantly re-using. Or, differently put: As long as Papyrus will still be in the thing I seriously doubt they’re giving any thought to technical debt. Already in Skyrim people rather used the UI to script stuff (because that’s Flash and ActionScript is at least remotely sane and fast) but ultimately it’s SKSE (that is, native dlls) for anything that isn’t a lag fest.
It’s not so much that CreationEngine is easy to mod, it’s that it’s what a gigantic community of modders are used to and have developed tooling for (you can get by with little to no use of CreationKit which is an abomination all on its own). Stockholm Syndrome at its finest or we’d have seen much more content for RedEngine which is far technically superior (and yet CDPR is abandoning it for Unreal).
a wholly new engine would almost certainly break mods or atleast make them harder to make as janky as creation engine can be it’s the best engine for modding there is and bethesda games absolutely need modding and not just cause the glitches
A new engine would just have to have a new mod API. Plenty of engines have mod APIs. Nothing’s really stopping them, but they really love driving creation engine onward for some reason.
bethesda is not making a whole new engine from scratch that just isn’t happening if they switched engine it’d probably just be to a licensed engine like unreal and that sucks for mod support the reality isn’t creation engine vs a from scratch in house engine that supports modding just as well but with less jank it’s creation engine vs unreal or something else maybe but not in house and there’s no other engine out there that currently exists that’s as good for modding
The engine is only half of the issue. Fallout New Vegas is far better than any other in the series. While it still has the engine bugs, it also does what it needs to and does that better games can be made than starfield with the engine stack they have. They are just design limited due to their business choices. Not solely their engine but their design is clearly lacking as well.
I heard the rumor of oblivion remaster but the only thought I had was why not Morrowind? As someone who’s only heard of how good it is but never played im curious cause it seems like aside from Skyrim Morrowind was everyone’s favorite elder scrolls
Especially since Oblivion seems to work fine on modern Xboxen. Back on reddit, all the Morrowind first-timers were using OpenMW, and all the Oblivion first-timers were playing on console somehow.
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