Forza is bread and butter for Microsoft, just like Halo and Gears. They really are shooting themselves in the foot with this. Forza originally got me on Xbox, and to be honest, it is a huge reason I am still on it as my main console.
It may be, and I feel for Turn10, but they really dropped the ball with the latest motorsport. It only has like a few hundred players on steam, after two years of essentially live service game. Of course the game itself is fine, it’s the “update trickles” and “grind to own” philosophies that are at fault and those were probably decisions also pushed by MS, but here we are. I really hope that Playground doesn’t screw up their next Forza, because rhey might meet the same fate. Then again these days success doesn’t guarantee you’re not getting the axe.
I totally get what you’re saying, but using steam numbers to judge how active an Xbox game is not fair. Steam isn’t the native player base. It’s far more active on console and still draws solid numbers.
I do agree with the grind being a bit much on the latest, though.
Yeah, I was just trying to get the point across and didn’t really have other recent metrics. Just checked and it grew to 1k avg users per day after the most recent update and is now 15x less active than FH5, if that paints a more accurate picture.
Good grief, I hope all affected people will be able to land on their feet quickly enough.
Microsoft is canceling its new Perfect Dark game that it announced in 2020, according to an internal memo from Xbox president of game content and studios Matt Booty. The company showed off gameplay during the 2024 Xbox Games Showcase, but at the time, didn’t provide a release window for the game.
I’m sure there’ll be more cancellations announced soon enough…
Netflix getting in on the streamed video games wasn’t all that crazy. I flirted with it initially, as they had a few good Steam titles on there that I was effectively getting handed for free.
But the marketing approach of jamming “Play this clickbait garbage game, you stupid idiot!” install button into my face every time I visited the site ultimately lead me to cancel my subscription. Like so much else in modern streaming, the website’s admins do not want you to have any control over your front page. The end result is utterly alienating.
the website’s admins do not want you to have any control over your front page. The end result is utterly alienating.
This is one of the biggest things. Back when I would netflix often, I would constantly be annoyed when the ‘continue watching’ dialog was not the first one. Stop moving it around! Now I just watch everything locally. It’s so much nicer.
There is no reason streaming should be such a pain in the ass, and it amazes me the industry has made basic, paid access to shows a chore. And they wonder why viewership is not great*.
*Also the writing generally sucks ass and assumes I’m not paying attention. No, seriously, they assume you aren’t paying attention and write shows as such now. It makes so many things unwatchable.
*Also the writing generally sucks ass and assumes I’m not paying attention.
I’ve seen the articles dealing with the phenomenon of “Standard Netflix Show” and how it has become so painfully formulaic that it can only be described as background noise.
Really not a great sign when your premium service is treated like elevator music. But hey, they’ve got a near-trillion dollar valuation, so clearly I’m dumb and their C-levels have earned every penny.
I can’t understand what fucking market research “geniuses” came up with the idea that making streaming less accessible/more annoying was a good idea and would net more profits.
But then again, the mass general population is fucking dumb
But then again, the mass general population is fucking dumb
That’s a lazy explanation. It neglects that Netflix did have a lot of accumulated goodwill from ease of access and quality content.
But now its in the enshittification era. All the streaming services are behaving like this. There’s no alternative that doesn’t suck with a comparable library.
Not a bad idea on paper. The games are not actually on Netflix. You just download an alternate version of the app (with no DLC or iAP), and login to your Netflix account to access the game. Some solid indie games on there.
That said, I would never in my life pay for Netflix, but my family has it, so ya know, free mobile games when I’m bored.
Good idea waiting on Firebreak. I’ve dabbled thanks to it being included in the PS+ Extra tier and have some thoughts. It’s clearly a Double-A or even Single-A if that exists game that feels like a fun side project while Control 2 is in the works. There is fun to be had in it especially if you can get friends involved but it isn’t a game with staying power. I feel like I’ll keep it installed for a while and play a few rounds every now and again, checking on the patches, and just using it for a fun romp with no commitment. It is certainly light on content and buggy though so a few patches wouldn’t go amiss.
I keep playing it just because it’s something to do, but I feel it really misses the mark of what the Control franchise should be about. The world is interesting. It told interesting stories within the confines of a single player game. Firebreak doesn’t seem to have a story at all, and the action is pretty average with the same mininal enemy variety as Control. It also does not feel like a game from a company like Remedy; it’s half-cooked and janky. It works but it’s not quite polished.
The second time my save games got messed up after doing the first mission for the janitor. Seemed my old cloud save games fucked it up. It became a mess.
The third time I deleted every cloud save, and it worked. Then, after ten hours the game crashed. And I lost three missions. And a lot of progress. None of the auto saves fixed it.
Dear Remedy, I have a PC. With a hard drive. I have room for thousands of save games. Let me fucking save my game myself!!
I had good memories of Control, but now my memories consist only of frustration. Why don’t Devs put in a reasonable save system in their games?
I had the same complaint about Deathloop. If I’m playing the single-player only version, then why do I have to restart the loop if I suddenly have to quit? And why does the game warn me that I will lose all unsaved progress? You literally can’t save!
God, I hate shit like that! When it makes you wonder if you can quit the game because it’s late for example. Does it save? When did it save last? That’s just asshole design.
I’m playing Prey at the moment, it has quick saves aside of regular manual saving. It’s so comfortable!
It’s been a while since I played deathloop but I seem to remember you can only save the game certain times, I think only when you’re in the tunnels and time has passed.
Yes, when you make it back into the tunnels, the game considers it a finished loop and advances to the next day segment, which is sort of like a save point but you can’t save your progress during a loop and come back to it. When you make it back to your “save point” at the tunnel and the day advances, if you hit escape and exit the game, the game is all “Are you sure you want to do this? All unsaved progress will be lost” - as if there were some further action you could take, but there isn’t. It’s like they had a save function in at one point but decided against it, then never fixed the exit verbiage.
Gog, it has cloud saves there. Also I should have written a script to copy the save files every twenty minutes or so in the background. Would have saved me after the crash I guess…
And yet, they still think they’re too good to put track pads on it.
I don’t think these companies are aware that what made the deck popular was it knew what it was and that it had a lot to prove, and so it featured a very focused design that differentiated it from PCs as a worthwhile form factor, but also provided methods for adding compatibility to just about any game, and thus allowed it to compensate for being in a form factor that is just sometimes inherently inconvenient for PC gaming. It wasn’t just a gaming pc with an Xbox controller taped to it, which this is.
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