Was highly disappointed in the first title. Not really gonna pick up a sequel for an RPG with 8 armors, 13 weapons, and an alright story for 80 dumb boi points. Even if it has 16 armors. It honestly might have been better as a story driven instead of tryna sell out on their New Vegas history.
I bought GamePass just for Outer Worlds because everyone pointing out that’s it’s from the team that made “New Vegas”.
I did a whole review of this game, and one of the first things I tackled was that it is absolutely not from the New Vegas team in terms of writing or design leadership. I completely blame the marketing for setting wrong expectations by creating that connection.
It is a good game, but going in wrongly thinking (due to misleading marketing) that it is New Vegas In Space is going to leave you frustrated.
Hot take, but $80 is a perfectly reasonable price for a “mainline” game.
Back in 1998, I saved all my money to buy Quest 64 for the suggested retail price of $60. That’s $120 in today’s money, and I guarantee you I didn’t get as much game as I will with Outer Worlds 2. Games dipped to $50 when they moved to discs, but even that was more expensive than today once you factor in inflation.
Realistically, an extra $10 isn’t pricing anyone out. All modern gaming platforms are expensive. There are still plenty of ways to enjoy gaming for cheap; they just don’t involve the newest platforms. That has been the case for most of the history of gaming.
Meanwhile games are more expensive than ever to develop. We want developers to get paid, and we want them to take more risks, but both of those things cost money.
There’s two issues with this thinking. The first is the assumption that the additional money is going to the developers. Considering Microsoft continues to layoff developers, I think we can safely rule that out as a possibility. It’s going to the c-suite and maybe marketers.
The second is the assumption that games are more expensive than ever to develop. This is beyond untrue; games have actually never been cheaper to develop. That’s a big reason why indies have exploded in popularity, and in many ways have supplanted AAA as the primary drivers of innovation in the industry. AAA games are bloated because business executives want to chase infinite money, and put ludicrous amounts of man hours chasing the dragon of graphical fidelity. I strongly believe that more mid-budget titles focused on solid gameplay fundamentals with good art direction would result in greater success, but since that won’t make infinite money I doubt the shareholders will ever take that route.
Considering Microsoft continues to layoff developers, I think we can safely rule that out as a possibility.
It’s possible that in this specific instance Microsoft would not spend the extra money wisely. But for the industry as a whole, if the financials look better, fewer people will be laid off and companies will be willing to take more risks.
The second is the assumption that games are more expensive than ever to develop. This is beyond untrue; games have actually never been cheaper to develop.
Yes, indie games are cheaper to produce, which is why they cost less. The prevalence of mid-budget indie games strengthens my point: gamers have many options at many price points, and raising the cost of AAA games to $80 isn’t pricing anyone out.
In any case, we’re not talking about indie games. A big game like Baldur’s Gate 3 or Elden Ring costs $100M+ to make, which is a lot more expensive than it used to be.
The graphical arms race is also easily explained by the fact that a lot of AAA publishing execs own stock in NVIDIA or Microsoft or Sony or all of those, and are very interested in pushing the latest and greatest hardware for a game that has picture perfect glistening skin for the most cookie cutter story and gameplay that involves pointing and shooting a thousand goddamn times and maybe a few explosions.
I miss when games weren’t interested in maximizing my carbon emissions.
Weird how entitled publishers have become, you don’t automatically get peoples money because “gaming”. Something is only worth what people can buy it for learn it one way or another.
Sure, I’ve bought tons of games that are on Game Pass, because I like keeping the game when I’m done, and not having to rush to finish it before the subscription renews.
They set the 70$ price point and they set the gamepass price, it's all abstract values that they decide. That's price anchoring at play, you think you're getting a good deal in comparison, so of course you get the gamepass, but no matter which product you buy, microsoft wins.
Well yes, but understand this is the function of gamepass being so cheap at the moment, to convince you temporarily that it is in your best interests as a consumer to rent video games rather than buy them because for now massive corporations like Microsoft are artifically holding the consumer price of these subscription services low to entice enough customers to buy in that they can then turn around and destroy other methods of earning a living in the video game industry as anything but a tiny indie game studio and waves wand with flourish all of a sudden the video game industry sucks even more than it used to and you have to watch ads every 10 seconds even though you are paying more for gamepass “premium crystal edition” than you do for all your streaming TV services combined…
Look if that is the future y’all want, great, but just be honest about it at least?
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