Onus is on them to actually release a good game, not on the potential customer to have any faith especially with their track record. Turning NMS into a decent game was the least they could have done.
Maybe but turning it into a good game was the least they could have done in the end for people who gave them money. That would apply to TDB devs too going forward.
I am sorry but if any gaming journalist is not the least amount of sceptical about ANY release today, then they either don’t play games or are sleeping under a rock.
Without a doubt, Hello Games pulled NMS around and made it into a great title but this took years and we also have seen this blind optimism before with Cyberpunk 2077. Even a “wiser” Game studio can fail and not deliver.
Too many titles over the last years were lukewarm even highly anticipated and hyped titles either were “meh” or failed at release. The number of games that redeemed themselves is only a few and can be probably counted on one hand. A gaming Journalist should know about this!
So, I am not even sorry if I am not hyped about it. It does sound interesting but “I believe it when I see it”. There is too much time that has to go down the road for this to come out and there are a lot of things that can/will go wrong in that time.
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 $100M+ to make, which is a lot more expensive than it used to be.
The graphical arms race is also easily explained by the fact that a lot of AAA publishing execs own stock in NVIDIA or Microsoft or Sony or all of those, and are very interested in pushing the latest and greatest hardware for a game that has picture perfect glistening skin for the most cookie cutter story and gameplay that involves pointing and shooting a thousand goddamn times and maybe a few explosions.
I miss when games weren’t interested in maximizing my carbon emissions.
Fables got to be far along enough to not get cancelled but my expectations are incredibly low. Nothing against Forza Horizon but giving a studio that has only ever made Forza Horizon games a AAA RPG reboot where the original game was known for it’s super endearing and fun writing along with a hodgepodge of promised god game mechanics in a third person RPG is a bad idea. Also using the Forza engine
So they need writers, they need game designers that do third person combat, level/creature/etc designers since racing simcades replicate real world stuff, I imagine them even needing a different voice acting director rather than whatever they do with Forza Horizon.
It’s pretty much a startup studio with a huge budget that has to upgrade the Forza engine to make content creation for quest/gameplay designers/non-programmers easy. Also studio heads have to learn how to manage the staff and content pipeline for a huge RPG game. Recipe for terrible growing pains. Should have never pushed almost all their studios towards Kinect and then live service. Maybe then Lionhead wouldn’t have atrophied and been shut down
Not surprised at all. What WILL surprise me is if M$ actually releases another XBOX console. Because as far as I’m concerned right now, regardless of what they say, they are not.
Seems a foregone conclusion at this point that they’re going to brand a PC as an Xbox and allow it to run both Xbox and PC games on it. They may not even bother making the hardware themselves like they’re doing with this partnership on the “Xbox” handheld which is really just a cross branded Asus handheld.
I really hope they do, or either allow Devs to publish games only on the good console. Having to release for the S if you want to release Xbox at all is a nightmare that needs to stop, it’s gonna get harder as time goes on.
This… is actually kind of exciting. Two massive studios (potentially) showing they also feel that the current AAA space is saturated with boring, soulless, samey games, year after year.
Did they try having some games I might be interested in? I don’t feel like they need marketing I feel like everyone knows about Xbox, then the fact that they exist. The big problem is that I have no reason to buy one.
At some point have they tried possibly making a decent halo game? Because the recent installments have not been good.
Yeah, I’m leaning against it being a timed exclusivity thing, just because those are normally for much longer than just a month. I think it’s the S not having enough RAM causing problems.
Asus and Lenovo clearly put no thought into how controlling windows desktop with a controller feels worse than pancaking your own testicles. The steam deck trackpads are far from an amazing experience for desktop input but it is at least usable and not the worst thing ever.
It’s got some ground to make up if it’s going to try to take on the ROG Ally. Still, competition is exactly what this space needs ATM - can’t wait to see where the market is in a few years!
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