Personally, I have no trouble believing that. Thing is, these companies’ investors don’t really benefit from long-term plans. So, if it does not pay out in the next two or so years, I expect them to scrap that endeavour altogether.
I just find it weird that Apple decided to jump on that train now, but it’s also possible that they started development at the peak of the hype and finished only just now.
I mean, the VR hype from a few years ago has mostly tapered off. Meta clinged onto it for quite a while with their Metaverse idea, but even they seem to have given up on it earlier this year, as LLMs stole the last bit of spotlight they had.
And the PS VR 2 launched earlier this year, too, was generally well-regarded from a hardware viewpoint, but the lack of hype means there’s still not terribly many games being released for it.
It also is an expensive investment and people aren’t exactly flush with money, thanks to inflation + countermeasures. So, if there is a chance, they buy this headset and no games get released for it, many people will hold off on that.
“These AAA publishers have, mostly, used this production scale to keep their top franchises in the top selling games each year.”
I never quite understood, why it’s not more popular among big publishers to create smaller games throughout the year. You can have risky AAA titles in development and compete in the AA market at the same time.
If I remember correctly, it got hyped as the procedural generation not following the usual formulaic approach, where ‘new’ species are created by just propping tusk C onto body shape F etc…
It’s developed by Facebook, but it’s not one of those in-browser games you might be thinking of. “Meta Quest” is their VR platform. So, while the quality might be similar, you do need to buy rather expensive gear to play this particular game…
Borrowing isn’t always the active part. When a company is listed on the Stock Exchange, then investors play the active role by buying or selling their stock.
Most investors don’t just have tons of money laying around. They have property, which they can list as security when borrowing money from banks. And then they lend that borrowed money to companies seeking(/allowing) investment. That means:
a) With high interest rates, investors do have a need for their lent money to pay out, too. As do the banks, because they borrowed it from the central bank.
b) Ultimately, lots of money will be given back to the central bank. The money is effectively removed from the economy then. If you’ve ever heard that inflation comes from too much money being in circulation, that’s how that ties back in.
I’m no expert either, though. I’m just summarizing what makes sense to me and what I’ve learnt from making this post a few weeks ago: feddit.de/post/2514573
Yeah, inflation rate is high, so central banks are trying to counteract that by basically slowing down the economy, so that our normally scheduled inflation countermeasures kick in appropriately. Well, and the usual way to slow down the economy is to make it more costly to loan money, i.e. increase interest rates. Which means investors can’t just pump money into any company anymore, they want that money to actually pay out to cover those interest rates. And that means companies need to actually be profitable to get money to finance their operation.
For anyone left behind, Minetest is a community-developed alternative.
It’s more of a game engine/launcher + highly moddable, so the base game is rather minimalistic, but you can simply install more extensive games. For example, for a very Minecraft-like experience, MineClone2 is your best bet.
Hmm, do you mean with a limited number of slots of what can be on offer in the pawn shop? So, that players can maybe grab one or two trophies for selling and leave the rest behind? Otherwise, I’m not sure, what your idea is. 🙃
In my opinion, it works best to make loot non-sellable. It takes away the need to fill your inventory with tons of garbage, just to carry it to the store. Instead, your inventory can be reduced to a size that meaningfully limits your options during challenges and forces you to select your equipment strategically.
Personally, I try to see it positive. They want to protect others from being disappointed from yet another Bethesda game. I got burned by Skyrim in my youth, so when I see Todd Howard spitting straight lies again, I’ll try to save others the disappointment.
Now that Starfield is public, I feel like people can at least try to form an own opinion, but if only the people who are willing to pay extra talk about it, then you’ve only got Bethesda fans talking.