Pollution and nuclear war destroyed the environment.
The economy is in shambles, big corporations rule over the world and exploit the powerless working class.
Crime has overtaken the country. It doesn’t matter who you are: you are either one of them, or on the receiving end.
Breathable air is a subscription service, and price hikes happen every other month to please shareholders.
Game devs are still releasing games for the PS4 and XOne consoles. Nobody has yet understood the purpose of the next gen consoles. Every other day, someone screams “but muh exclusives!” to the sky. But no one answers back. God remains silent.
Thing is, they don’t need to sell consoles anymore. They’re in the gamepass business now.
They need to sell consoles to sell GamePass to people. Nobody is going to play games on a Firestick. Same reason why nobody bought the mobile ports of Resident Evil. Those who play games, buy the hardware for it. Some go overboard with the high-end PC and some prefer to buy a cheaper console, but nobody is like “yeah I’ll play Elden Ring on my phone”. Gamers want the hardware, and casuals don’t buy gaming subscriptions. It’s a lost cause.
“MS doesn’t care about selling Xbox console” is a lie they have been pushing for a while now because their console sales have been tanking for that many years. They would LOVE to sell more consoles, they just can’t, so they attempt to spin the story a different way so that the shareholders are still happy. What, you want to know about sales? But who cares about sales, it’s all about engagement! Look at those big, happy numbers we are showing you!
Nobody enters a business with the idea that “whatever, even if we don’t sell enough, it’s fine, we still had a great time”. MS didn’t became the world’s biggest corporation by being lazy.
They currently have roughly 34 million subscribers (as of February, I’m guessing Activision Blizzard King is going to bump this number up further), let’s assume an average of $12 a month. That’s over $400 million coming in every month or 1.2 billion every quarter on the books. They don’t have to rely on a big game to have a good month.
That’s great until you consider the fact that GamePass doesn’t operate in a vacuum. To put games on their service, they have to pay developers. They then need to please shareholders who want subscribers and revenue to increase. The fact that they increased the price twice in a row and effectively doubled the price of GamePass overnight suggests that they are not pleased with the current revenue.
Heck, we don’t even know how many of those 34m subscribers are paying customers, and how many just got into GP by paying $1 or benefitting from some other deal. I was one of those 34m back in February, because I got a year for free with the Rewards program (back when it was still worth something; they axed that one as well, because of course). When they asked me to pay to renew it, I cancelled the subscription. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
You’re more valuable to them having the gamepass subscription and just playing on your phone over someone who buys a console and purchases 7 or 8 games a year.
Sure, but that’s the same as Don Mattrick asking customers to “stick to their X360”. The choice is not between buying games on XOne or subscribing to GamePass on your phone. The choice is between an Xbox, a PS5, a Switch or a PC. Two of those choices means that they have lost a customer (you can’t subscribe to GP on PS or Nintendo consoles), and I’d be curious to know how many people are subscribing for GP on PC instead of just buying games on Steam. You don’t need GP to play online on PC as you do on console, and the prices are cheap enough that you are probably saving money just buying those games instead of renting them.
And let’s not talk about how terrible the user experience is on their PC storefront compared to literally any other competing storefront - I’d rather buy a game on Epic than use their Xbox store, and that says a lot. I had a game on PC thanks to the Play Anywhere program (bought it on Xbox, got the PC version as well), but I had to buy it again on GoG to mod it because MS considers their game files more precious than the holy grail itself and wouldn’t let me go anywhere close to them, let alone touch them.
I feel the problem is not the industry but the fanbase. As of the last few years, it’s become pretty common to see videogames become target of hatred for “going woke”: H:FW’s Aloy’s “peach fuzz”, TLOU2’s Abby being too masculine, women not living to the average beauty standard, LGBT characters “shoved down people’s throats”, character editors decoupling gender and sex or using gender-neutral language, narrative being cringe because it targets millennials (as if older games didn’t target young audiences, too)… The industry is going forward, but I don’t think the fanbase is ready yet.
Sometimes I think the fanbase is regressing, even. I’ve seen people lamenting increased “politics” in their videogame, yet saying that MGS or FFVII or Bioshock are their favourite games. Gamers don’t even pay attention to what they consume, they merely parrot whatever their favourite influencer says. “Woke” is a meaningless term that gets thrown around whenever they don’t like something.
Lol, enshittification came faster than expected. At least Netflix was successful before the price hike, and then decided to be greedy because their user base was willing to pay.
On the other side of the fence, Xbox Series consoles tanked harder than XOne (which was already a colossal failure) and Game Pass subscribers fell short of corporate expectations every year since its inception. And they decide that this is the best time to double the price of the service? Good luck with that decision, Microsoft.
Who is gonna pay $15/month for a catalog of old games? Old games are already cheap enough that you can buy them directly and still “profit” over keeping an ongoing subscription. And $20/month for day one games? At that price, you’re better off just buying the damn game. GP was already hard to justify at its previous price, but this new price point is egregious.
Great games, I have fond memories of me and my brother playing those flash games.
If you don’t want to pay, the Flashpoint Collection already has these flash games and they are fully functional, although I think I’ll grab this release to support the dev after all these years.
I don’t see the point of doing a remaster of a remaster. This game needs a proper remake. As a big fan of the original game who played the heck out of its original X360 release, without an update to its outdated AI it’s frustrating to the point of unplayability.
I used to think the same way, but one day MS was having server issues on their end, and my XOne refused to play my rightfully owned game despite the disc being in the console. I was also unable to log into my account, which made me unable to save my progress, which made playing the game (if it suddenly decided to work) impossible.
Consoles were great until the X360/PS3 era. I could buy a disc, insert the disc into the console, and start playing, and the game would probably work fine without much hassle. I played my X360 offline for years and it worked just fine. Nowadays I go to the store, buy the disc, go back home, insert the disc, wait for it to install, and then I discover that the game was not optimized for my console of choice and it runs awfully to the point of unplayability. And if I have no internet connection, tough luck, my console turns into an expensive brick.
I now just buy on GoG. Much easier that way. Console exclusives are ported to PC anyway, so you’re not missing anything. You also get nice perks like playing online for free if you’re into multiplayer games, or playing older games on emulators (and current ones, because fuck Nintendo).
“We’re excited for the launch of Black Myth Wukong on Xbox Series X|S and are working with Game Science to bring the game to our platforms. We can’t comment on the deals made by our partners with other platform holders, but we remain focused on making Xbox the best platform for gamers, and great games are at the center of that.”
EULA are probably unfair due to the imbalance of rights and obligations between the parties.
This is the most important amongst the bullet points for me. Companies should not be allowed to hide shady stuff in the wall of text that you are required to accept to play the game that you have already bought.
I bought a bunch of indie games that looked cool: Alwa’s Legacy (I’m playing it right now, it’s pretty fun), Night in the woods and Phoenotopia: Awakening. I also bought Dishonored (which I played back in the days, but I’m eager to replay one of these days, alongside its DLCs).
Risky purchase of the week: King of Dragon Pass. Never heard of it, but the reviews were positive and the screens look interesting, so I decided, why not.
I also really, really wanted to buy I was a teenage exocolonist, because it’s one of my favourite games from 2022, but the GoG version still hasn’t been updated to the recent patch, and seems like it never will. Shame.
EDIT July 2024: I mailed the publisher to ask them if they were willing to update the GoG release of their game, and they immediately went and did it! You can add I was a teenage exocolonist to my GoG recommendation list. It’s a great game that really deserves your time.