The consoles have been out for 5 years this year. There are rumours that the next generation of consoles will release in 2027, which would be the usual cycle.
I really think they’re at a point of diminishing returns on consoles. PC or steam deck is the better bargain even for the folks who don’t have much to spend upfront. the lower upfront cost was what justified the consoles in the first place, for me at least. now they’re more expensive than something like steam deck or older PC with midrange GPU.
There’s also the fact that hardware costs keep going up, but there’s not really a big technological leap between generations anymore. There’s little reason to buy into the next generation when the selling point boils down to “Play the same games, but slightly smoother*!”
*If there’s enough development time to implement the option to do so
the biggest problem plaguing the STALKER remasters is a strange bug that seems to cause the games to render at a resolution lower than what you set it as and then upscale it improperly, resulting in blurry, muddy visuals that persist even if you turn settings like AMD FSR Super Resolution and depth of field off.
Okay that’s… that’s not great, but should be fixable in a patch surely?
Another highly contentious change that’s drawn the ire of fans is the complete removal of everything Russian or related to the Soviet Union, including all Russian voice acting and localization, the use of Soviet rubles as in-game currency, and even every Soviet sign, statue, and landmark present in the real-world Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that were included in the original titles.
The versimilitude and basis in real world locations was a massive part of what made the originals so great, you can’t just scrub that off. I empathize with them, and I am personally firmly on the side of Ukraine but this sits really poorly with me.
The Zone’s supernatural mysteries are layered over recognizable pieces of Soviet iconography and rusting Soviet technology is a huge part of what gives STALKER its atmospheric vibe, and the absence of beloved voice lines like “Cheeki breeki iv damke!” just feels…wrong
Yeah I’m not touching these abominations. They even removed Cheeki Breeki? The single most recognisable thing in their games, the most prevalent and beloved meme?
Happy they didn’t fuck up the originals, but added these as separate titles. Fucking Sony recently pushed a rEmaSteREd Days Gone as a patch and it sucks, the version before looked great at 45 FPS on Steam Deck, this one is in the toilet for dubious gains. They certainly did it so that people who play the game on their ps5 pro don’t notice how much better the game looks and works on the pc.
Yeah I agree with you on thinking of it as a new game fly. The problem I have is MS’s plan is to make gamers comfortable with only renting games by making it cheap then when there is no other option. They jack up the price.
I still haven’t seen the “no other option” scenario as so many claim. You could say $80 price tags do that, but if all prices are going up, that doesn’t track so much.
They also discount games if you buy them while you have game pass. So there’s some encouragement to try a game, find you want to keep it, and pay for a permanent copy should it be removed from GP (or the player decides to stop the GP subscription).
Still, I’m done with them because they’re done with talented studios, and are active participants in the Palestinian genocide.
It’s more the trend of i have seen in the tech space of a deal too good to be true. A tech company taking a loss to gain marketshare and drive out competition on price or flat out buy them then when they have cornered the market drive up the price for insane profits and customers have no choice because you effectively become the platform.
The video game market is extremely hard to “corner”. It can happen for professional software like document processing, image editing, etc, but far too many startups are interested in making games, and there’s multiple digital stores to sell them. Minecraft and Factorio even sold off their own websites. Clair Obscur recently outsold a lot of big publisher efforts, and definitely didn’t need Game Pass’s visibility.
They can corner one particular audience like Call of Duty, but can only push so many expectations on them before those gamers consider other games. They tried it with Fallout, complete with subscription, and it was massively unpopular.
There are not much possibilities to legally own games left. Physical releases are nearly full gone on PC (physical boxes only containing Steam Keys), and even on Consoles they become less and less common (or turned into something like the Switch 2 Game cards). On the digital release front only GOG comes to mind as as store where one could say that one owns the game after purchase and download. Everything else only sell licenses that can be revoked or removed any moment.
I feel like, though it doesn’t come up much, we should conceptually separate “owning the game” from “having a physical edition”. Some games give you a disc, but barely offer ownership (remember CD keys?) while other games are only sold digitally, but are ultra-permissive with what you do with them.
I get the sense many indie companies would like to give people as much control as possible, but also can’t afford printing box sets.
Hot take: gamepass is preferable to a digital storefront. Any game you “buy” digitally is only somewhat less temporary than gamepass. At least gamepass doesn’t fool you into thinking you own the games you’re playing
Buy physical. If you’re buying digital, only buy from GOG. Pirate everything you can, and seed that shit forever
I agree on GoG, buying physical only gets you the broken unpatched game they shipped. Steam i feel okay with since they are a private company and not all their games are DRMed and it’s clearly marked if they are.
Not might be. Will be. They could charge $50 a month and get away with it. That’s what the Nintendo fanbase has proven. For me. Ultimate is worth $25 a month. Once it goes over that I’m out. I’ll stick to ps plus on its own.
Of course it is. First of many. The price will keep rising, since currently Microsoft is losing money on it. The number of games will decrease, the price will keep going up, the users will cancel, rinse and repeat.
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