I think it was Netflix that went through a period of releasing movies in cinemas and putting it on streaming on day one.
It was such a resounding success that they no longer do that.
I guess MS has deep enough pockets to not realise their folly yet. PSN Premium/Extra isn’t as good value from a consumer point of view, but it also hasn’t killed their own console. What that cannibalises is the “wait for a sale” people, who would likely have paid £20 for a game a year or two down the line. I think that’s a more manageable than losing all the day one £65 sales.
The first few were really good on console. I played the first one on PC as well and there was definitely something missing with mouse and keyboard controls. The vehicles especially.
You have to remember that most FPS on consoles were pretty terrible back then (e.g. Medal of Honor series), and there was a lot of experimentation to try and find a control scheme that didn’t completely suck, along with just the right amount of aim assist. Other devs were still wrestling with that into the Xbox 360 era. Sony put so much effort and money into Killzone, and it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Halo.
Plus, split screen co-op made it very popular. It’s one of the few games to keep that into the modern era as well.
I assume a lot of the top level staff stick about until their contractually obliged period for getting a massive payday is over, and then look very closely at whether they actually want to be told what to do by a bunch of suits all day long.
Realistically they’re working to make somebody else richer at that point, and there’s only so much enthusiasm anyone can have for that. Certainly not enough for the long hours needed in the games industry.
Bizarre Creations had the misfortune of being owned by both of them before being shut down.
It really shows that something is fucked up in businessland that they’re so bad at managing studios, when managing studios is literally all they fucking do.
Same with EA. It’s just a wasteland of dead companies. The list of studios they’ve closed is bigger than the list of ones they still own.
Eh? They’ve been chasing the one-off Xbox 360 high for two generations now, and are nowhere near it. Sony have near full dominance in the console space. Valve have so much dominance in the PC space that they’ve got people to try Linux.
The aim of GamePass was that people would stream games and not need a console at all, and that just hasn’t happened for them. Their entire gamble was on cloud gaming, and it’s not paid off at all.
As much as the higher tiers of PSN aren’t as good value as GamePass, it’s certainly lead to higher quality games for Sony’s platform as they can still get sales revenue from shorter or niche games, rather than just looking at a single figure and laying off whole studios.
I’d much rather pay money for a full game now (and I’ll be honest, my day one purchases this gen are limited to games I’m really interested in), or wait and play on sub later (and it’s about 18 months I think for games to go “free”), than have half a game on sub now and get nickle and dimed for the rest of it.
Yes, that’s why they’re at home all day, and ignoring all the well paid jobs out there with free healthcare that I’m sure they’d get if they just went door to door with a résumé like these ghouls pretend they did in the 1950s.