Steam Deck is not any closer to real ownership than Xbox or PlayStation. Video Games have had “non-ownership” clauses in their EULAs long before the Xbox or PlaysStation existed, sadly.
I think for a visual novel, you’re probably better off buying it near release for full price. Maybe even get the more expensive version that comes with the soundtrack if you like the game.
For other types of games, especially more mass market games, they’re more complex and prone to bugs. Visual novels, not so much. So being patient in this particular case would certainly hurt the small creator making the game more than it will hurt your bank account. Visual novels aren’t usually $60.
Not necessarily. Even if the hardware wasn’t exactly the same, it came out too close to the Saturn. Had there never been a Saturn and the Dreamcast, even if it was slightly weaker like a Saturn 2.5, would have launched in 1996, the console would not have done so poorly. It also would not have been so quickly outclassed by its competition, as it would have directly competed with the PS1 and Nintendo64 the same year.
Its really all to my point that piracy had nothing to do with the console’s failure. There were other problems with the Dreamcast that caused its death.
The 32X and Saturn releases were confusingly close to each other and could easily lead to some confusion with consumers. Releasing both a disk console and a disk addon for the existing console in the same year could confuse people on whether they needed the new console or just the disk addon, especially with marketing that didn’t exactly make it clear. Similar issue the WiiU had with people thinking it was an addon for the Wii and determining they didnt need it. If the Dreamcast had started development instead of the Saturn, and released even 2 years after the Saturns release date in 1996, the console would have fared significantly better.
SEGA just didn’t pick the right console features for the right time. The Dreamcast was ahead of its time releasing in 1998, but by the time the PS2, GameCube, and especially Xbox launched just 2-3 years later, the Dreamcast hardware looked extremely outdated, because it was.
Third party developers’s fear of piracy didn’t help the console, but primarily it was released at the wrong time for the wrong price with the wrong features. If the 32X and Saturn never released and instead the Dreamcast came out in place of the Saturn, it would not have failed. Piracy didn’t have much to do with it.
In fact, the GameCube sold very badly in some SEA countries because it was too hard to pirate games for. Piracy literally leads to hardware sales in some countries.
343 is okay at making gameplay, but they are not good at making Halo gameplay. I mean, Halo 4 was just Call of Duty with Halo window dressing. And it makes sense because 343 was so proud to announce that they hired people who hate Halo to work on Halo. Well look how that turned out.
Big shock. This game has had a lot of red flags, and not the good kind one would expect from a Japanese themed game. Everything about this game from the marketing to the merchandising has been bad at best, and outright offensive/borderline racist at worst.
People have been dreaming of a Japan based AC game since the first one. Ubisoft could not have picked a worse game to mess up this badly than this one.
Finally, let me address some of the polarized comments around Ubisoft lately. I want to reaffirm that we are an entertainment-first company, creating games for the broadest possible audience, and our goal is not to push any specific agenda. We remain committed to creating games for fans and players that everyone can enjoy.”
I do not believe you Yves. You say you are committed to making games everyone want to enjoy, but your last like 4 games have released to awful sales because basically nobody wanted to play them. If you were committed to making games everyone wanted to enjoy then your sales would not be garbage. Your words and your data do not match. I mean, you literally just said Ubisoft remains committed to the GaaS model for games, thats pretty much the opposite of being player committed.