It’s interesting that this comes out during the FTC vs Microsoft case.
As much as Google shot itself in the foot, as usual, this also shows the anti-competitive landscape in gaming. One of the biggest issues Google had was convincing AAA studios to develop games for their “console”. Meanwhile, Microsoft is solving that by buying studios like Zenimax, Mojang, and soon Actiblizz. If you own the studio, they’re guaranteed to develop for your console, and they may choose not to develop for any competitor’s consoles.
But it has always been that way, with first party titles and exclusives , even purchasing studios like Rare or Psygnosis, its not like a brand new situation that developed right after Google announced Stadia.
If Google had done even any research, I would have started by looking at the PS1 launch and how Sony broke into a market then dominated by Nintendo and Sega with their exclusives, they would have secured a multi year pipeline of AAA titles before launch.
This is a mess Google could have completely avoided with some basic research and discussion with the remaining independent studios. Instead they launched and assumed that they could fix this shit later, rather than making an informed decision on if they actually had a real chance.
its not like a brand new situation that developed right after Google announced Stadia
No, but it’s telling that one of the world’s richest companies ran into this problem. It’s pretty typical of Google to be arrogant and not understand the market they were trying to break into. Also typical of them to give up when it turned out to be a hard problem to solve. But, still, they chose to give up rather than make what (for them) would have been a reasonably small investment to buy a few AAA studios.
It seems to me that to have been successful in this attempt they would have either had to become a major console manufacturer with their own exclusives (maybe not a market they wanted to be in) or to be the junior partner working with another console manufacturer, where they controlled the server side and the other company controlled the client-facing and studio-facing side. But, Google rarely does partnerships like that. You’re right that it really seems like they didn’t go into it with their eyes open. They seemed to just arrogantly assume that their technological superiority would be enough to disrupt consoles without having to do what everybody else did.
But this is a situation of their own making, anybody even remotely cognizant of how Sony and Microsoft entered the market, even Steam has lessons to share, would have been aware that they needed that pipeline of AAAs, and exactly how expensive AAA titles are to make. Its usually public record how much one of the manufacturers paid to buy studios as well, the order of magnitude of cash needed to properly enter the market are hardly secret.
Either they thought they could bully their way into getting them or they thought they didn’t need them, which is even worse, way way worse. They could have spent the money the others are in this space but didn’t, this is the main reason this fell on its arse. They can moan all they like about the price of admission but they could have afforded to pay it if they wanted or lobbied to change it before hand rather than wasting a few billions on this.
It will be very interesting at the level Apple pitch their new gaming service if the rumors are true. Do they go after the mobile lite eco system that Netflix is cobbling together or do they go all in?
This game was mocked when it was announced as late to the party, mocked when it was demoed as looking like some wish.com avengers characters, mocked upon release as being a shallow experience, and now it’s being delisted. My backlog remains resilient. Thank God I put on my Himalayan Walking Shoes!
Yeah I tried playing it this weekend. The very beginning was amazing and nostalgic, but as soon as I finished the opening mission I was bombarded with all the deals and packs and unlocks… I went from excited to feeling sick to my stomach over the amount of bait I had to dismiss before I even saw the main mobile landing page for the first time. I haven’t opened it since.
I mean it is a story since they used their own engine before and it affected development. Bet to a lot of people not into live service games this is more interesting than whatever they are making.
True, and the ‘Blam!’ Engine has a lot of history behind it but ultimately the end result is more important than the tools used to achieve it. But until something is announced by Bungie then it’s still kinda a non-story
The problem with this game is its design choices. Over simplified enemies leave much to be desired from previous titles. A world that levels with you means you never feel like you get better. I had to get lucky with a fucken item drop just to make my druid viable. Restarting every season? Only streamers and NEETs have time and desire to do that. This game was a pile of the worst design choices of the last 10 years. They even managed to make an established character (Lilith) bland by trying to make her seem morally grey. Chick has been trying to turn Sanctuary into her own faction for the Eternal Conflict since its inception. If I could I would refund this game, which sucks they already got their money.
I agree with you on some things and disagree in others. Random mobs don’t need to be particularly complex imho. I have skipped D3 but in D2 the most complexity random mobs had were the immunities, which imo is also not good design. The boss battles is where skill and brains and preparation should play a role, and in that regard I think D4 does a good job. The problem is that when playing I felt everything was a slog and enemies were a damage sponge at all times.
Also, seasonal resets were a known quantity and are standard for this kind of game, so I don’t really see the point on complaining about those. PoE also does resets and it’s never been an issue. The forced grind is where the problem lies.
As for Lilith, I didn’t feel she was morally grey. I felt that she was manipulating everything in such a way as to always be or be perceived as the lesser evil, trying to find her way to the top via underhanded means and manipulation, but always purely out of self interest. Definitely a black character, but in a more interesting way than the simple “I am evil so I must destroy”
That said, I have not touched this game since I completed the campaign. The story was decent, but the game was simply not fun, even though I like a lot of the artistic and technical details.
Hopefully it’ll be fun at some point, for now I still consider the money I spent to buy the game strongly in the not well spent category
The somewhat niche ARPG space is already competitive enough in strong game design with the likes of PoE, Grim Dawn, and Last Epoch for subpar games to make it long term.
You know whats better? Not reporting shit, I just published my game. I don’t want to report a bunch of numbers to Unity each month. I want to push updates to fix issues my users are complaining about. How the fuck are the biggest chucklefucks in charge of every company? Give me the fucking reigns I can do better than this.
I feel like most digital stores already gives you all the statistics you need to make this trivial though. Steam even reports the difference after refunds/returns for you.
it’s the best way to do a rev share. pretty sure unreal engine lets you self report too. If you start a business you can’t complain about having to run a a business by tracking sales.
I can when I didn’t have to do it before and this policy is forced upon me by an established vendor. Thats like saying you can’t bitch about material vendors in the construction industry, you absolutely can because they make your business work and you’ve entrusted them not to fuck you.
With all intentions of respect, and in complete agreement that Unity’s new terms are alarming, If you dont have any intentions of tracking your sales unless you are forced to by the creators of your engine you are using, I’m questioning if you have the chops to be a successful dev in the first place. This is why the vast majority of devs don’t even make enough to even pay Unity the fee and should just stick with a publisher instead of trying to handle the business end of things on their own.
Its not the tracking of sales thats the issue. Its having to report it to someone so they can take even more of my money when we haven’t been doing that for years.
I saw a theory from another lemmy user a while back that made a lot of sense. Basically shareholders get to a point where the want cash now. So they make a deal with the current CEO to do something shitty for short term profits. The shareholders get paid in the short term and then once the share price takes a hit they buy more shares at a discount. They then fire the current CEO who takes a nice exit fee and install someone else to do damage control and grow the stock price again. This is the only thing that makes sense to me because the alternative is that the current CEO is just actually that dumb.
For me the problem is that the shareholders are putting enormous pressure on publicly traded companies requiring ever lasting exponential growth.
Back then I posted a thread about why I think publicly traded companies are bad for our society, as an unpopular opinion and I got severely downvoted, but hey isn’t this another example for the latter?
This SaaS model was born exactly out of this and it is the worst offender.
Back then we were able to own our own software/hardware, now everything is leasing and perpetual paying for things you need/use everyday. Thank God we have foss apps that in most cases are better alternatives.
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