A friend of mine recommended the first Dragon’s Dogma to me a few years ago and convinced me to give it a try. I fell in love with the combat system, but never went too far into the game because the story, dialogues and characters were dull and insipid and gave me no reason to feel interested in the game’s world.
It’s so difficult to find good RPG games with a good story nowadays. I don’t expect DD2 to radically improve in this regard, but I hope they will at least try a bit more in the story department.
So MS has predictably decided to abandon disc-compatible consoles to push GP sales (and bank on the MS Store).
I only bought the Xbox One S because of the backwards compatibility program. Going disc-less would kill the vast majority of my existing Xbox 360 library, including titles that are backwards compatible but cannot be purchased on the store anymore (such as Prince of Persia 2008, Ace Combat 6, and many more).
Microsoft will buy my teapottery if anti-trust regulations don’t keep them in check. And, in today’s climate, I don’t believe for a moment that anybody will make a reasonable attempt to do so.
I wasn’t sold on it when it was first revealed, but looking at it now, I kinda dig it. Seems to embrace the platformer elements a lot more than I originally thought, which I really like, and movement/combat seems very fluid.
I loved Wargroove. It was the perfect successor to Advance Wars and improved the formula in almost every way, from more fast paced skirmishes (thanks to the alternative win condition of defeating the enemy commander) to the more balanced commanders.
I had some gripes with it, but hopefully they will be solved in this second iteration.
To anyone who likes turn-based strategy games, I highly recommend giving it a try!
As for Game Pass and other subscription services, Whitten said that developers like Aggro Crab would not be on the hook, as the fees are charged to distributors, which in the Game Pass example would be Microsoft.
In which case, Microsoft and other distributors will not release Unity games on their subscription services. This will harm game developers either way.
Geez, the internet and the tech industry as a whole is collapsing. Twitter, Reddit, Unity… What the fuck is going on in the last few years?
Yeah, I had never heard of Pokemon Sleep and was curious to see what it was about, but OP’s summary immediately killed my interest. I avoid battle pass-like content and FOMO-focused games like plague.
A lot of gaming sites asked developers whose games were on GamePass what they thought of it, and the answer was predictable. Like, nobody is going to ill talk the provider of the service their game is on.
Other developers didn’t speak ill of it because of the fear of burning bridges, I suppose.
The Game Bakers (Furi, Haven) talked about their difficult relationship with GP on Vice (LINK).
“Game Pass is such a fantastic platform for players,” said Leprince, “so there are possibly more Xbox players than ever interested in indie games. Unfortunately, without Game Pass, it is also very hard for many indie games to be visible on Xbox.”
Basically, the problem with a subscription service such as GP is that it cannibalizes other games’ sales outside the service itself. And since you are not guaranteed to land on GP, developing a game Xbox may be more of a gamble than it is on other platforms. I fear this may become the norm as more subscription services are rolled out and start encroaching the market.
There’s also the problem with founding. Furi sold 78% of its copies through PS+, yet only one third of its budget was paid by Sony for the deal. Developers have to decide whether they need less money immediately, or potentially more money down the line; but for indie developers, sometimes there is no choice: they either accept the deal, or shut down because they don’t have the founding to complete their next game.
I really like the Vice article I linked because it’s one of the very few who tried to analyze the situation impartially, with data backing it up. Most of the other industry journalists at the time were like “GP is the future! Gamers spend less and everyone gains more money!!1!”, parroting Spencer’s bullshit.
Hyperion+Endymion by Dan Simmons. Such a wonderfully written book that evokes so many sad feelings.
It’s veeeery slow (basically the entire first book is build up for the second one), but it’s so rewarding watching all the threads come together by the end.