Because people will pre-order games to the point that it’s made a healthy profit even before it’s even released. Consumers vote with their wallet and for some reason gamers just constantly choose to show publishers that shoddy, half-assed products are good enough for them.
While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
Ignore the pre-release hype (I mean hype before anyone gets to try the game, early access hype is good). If the game is hyped after people get to play it, then I find it’s safer to trust, though personal preferences can still make it miss the mark.
I won’t disagree with your stance, but I have just one question…
In which currency are you getting $100 for the basegame? Canada it’s $70 (rounding up), but pre-release it was C$60, USD it’s $50, in NZD it’s $80. The deluxe version isn’t worth it at all, you basically get the Golden Gate Bridge and the promise of a few assets and a DLC over the next year… for double the price.
It’s a bit like developing a microwave meal and it turns out that it only really cooks in 2 minutes if you have an ultra powerful microwave then putting out a press release that says I know it says it’ll cook in 2 minutes on the packaging but unless you have a really powerful microwave add a few minutes to it.
The responsibility is still on the players to have reasonable expectations of the game depending on the hardware that they have.
Also it’s 100% my fault for pre-ordering the damn thing, I don’t know why I did that. But that’s on me because if I really wanted to I could have refunded it.
Squadron 42 is the single player campaign of Star Citizen, that is supposed to launch as a separate game. It's basically a small portion of Star Citizen, but with a story and ending. I'm still not confident; waited too long for that.
They didn’t start pre-production in 2010, that’s when they started building the Kickstarter video, unless you’re counting the broad story strokes in CR’s head as “pre-production”, in which case Starfield was in pre-production for 25+ years. :P
Development on SQ42 started in 2013, and 10 years to not only build a game, but the engine tech and the studios as well, is not at all crazy given the game. Major games like RDR2 and GTAV take 8+ years, and they are working with already-established teams, and not doing anything crazy tech-wise.
And yes, MMOs have extremely long lives, both pre- and post-release. Eve is over 20 now. WoW is who knows how old. Maple Story devs have literally had kids and watched them go off to college.
I wouldn’t put too much stock in pre-release gameplay videos. Remember what the pre-release hype videos for Cyberpunk or No Man’s Sky looked like, and what the end results actually looked like?
I mean yeah. Idk why people pre-ordered it, but they did, that’s their whole funding. Now they owe a copy to all their “backers”, and it’s hard to see how releasing this game will bring in revenue. They are in a very big hole.
Say a simple (hours enjoyed playing)/(price of game) equation. How many hours (you enjoyed) per $ do you think is reasonable/expected? Or is there other criteria for you?...
Oh of course I never pre-order, but Zelda and Mario have not had any bad main games in the past decade so I don’t feel worried about buying them on release.
I just experienced this while playing Diablo 4. In the pre-season I routinely got ~120 FPS on my graphical settings and tried out the game again after season 2 release and my FPS shot up to 350.
I don’t really understand how people make the review threads, but we’re sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it’s even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the...
Here’s a pre-release video from City Planner Plays that discusses the new roadway options. I believe even C:S1 added in snap-to-angle options eventually, which made it very easy to build roads at right angles. Unless you mean parallel roads? This is something that vanilla C:S1 did not have, but it looks like C:S2 has that on launch. The new road-building tools are one of the features that had me most hyped.
Anyone buying a full price title without looking it up with a quick Google search or reading reviews on Steam is far gone from my compassion.
You can even refund it so easy it’s not even worth the outcry and i don’t even pretend to care about anyone pre-ordering digital downloads.
It’s shitty that these devs have to put the games out too early, but it would save everybody’s money and nerves if you just start to see releases today as early access because that’s what they all are. There are many companies out there which don’t say a peep and i won’t wreck anyone who at least tries to give a heads-up !pre! which anyone who cares could get easily for free.
Alright, no offense, but I think you need to expand your horizons, lol.
The last 5 games (all of which were post-acquisition) Nether Realm put out have all been multi-million sellers in a genre that struggles to do that, and their past 2 games are only second fiddle to Smash for number of copies sold. They're the only ones who figured out how to do single player content in a fighting game that interests people enough to buy those games for that content, and while Capcom and Bandai Namco both tried, I think you'll be hard pressed to find someone who thinks they did it better.
Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 were both post-acquisition, and regardless of my feelings of RDR2 (which is still that it is not a bad game by any means), both games are critical and commercial smash hits.
Relic has had very successful Warhammer 40k and Company of Heroes releases over the past 20 years.
Naughty Dog has made far more games post-acquisition than pre-acquisition, and some of their best-selling, highest-rated games have been on the more recent end of things. Perhaps you've heard of Uncharted and The Last of Us?
It’s kind of bullshit to call people impatient if they buy a game when the publisher says the game is ready for release.
At this point…you’re contributing to the cycle of buggy releases. Yes, the responsible gamers absolutely can call out the dumbasses who still pre-order games.
I realise in modern gaming most people don’t care about this anymore, but seeing a development roadmap for a game you can actually buy in a store is just a failure.
Remember betas and demos, now we pay for the privilege of these, you buy early access to play an unfinished product, you buy a deluxe edition for 72 hour pre-release.
Just a terrible trend I really hate to see and it doesn’t seem to happen anywhere else, I wouldn’t pay for a whole film and get the first quarter while the rest is edited and released, I wouldn’t pay for an album of 10 songs but they’re still writing 8.
Steam Next Fest is a week-long celebration featuring hundreds of FREE playable demos as well as developer livestreams and chats. Players try out upcoming games on Steam pre-release, developers gather feedback and build an audience ahead of their Steam launch, everyone wins!
The only and I mean ONLY problem I had with 514 ( I was in one of the testing phases pre release) was that it was a console exclusive, I can’t stand playing shooters on a controller anymore.
Pre release I was so hyped for cyberpunk, was patient and waited for reviews, so voted with my wallet and didn’t buy it, and just forgot it even existed
Watched Edgerunners animated series off the cuff and it had no business being as good as it was (same as Arcane - gj netflix)
The next time it went on sale I snapped it up and havent regretted it one bit. One playthrough on my old hardware, obligitory playthrough to test after I got an Rtx, and another now 2.0 is out - definitely got my moneys worth
The sad part is that tomorrow they could release “Assasins Creed: Reflection”. And people would make the exact same mistake all over.
You know Ubisoft has a shit reputation. You know Bethesda is famous for broken, buggy, glitchy games. You know Blizzard Activision isn’t the same as old Blizzard. Don’t you guys have phones?
I didn’t buy this game. I didn’t buy Starfield, and I didn’t buy Diablo IV.
Anyone not blinded by hype could see this coming to all those games from a paid pre-alpha deluxe collectors gold season battle pass track booster mile away.
Hardline was mocked for being weird mostly, not bad. People always saw it as a stop gap, as DICE didn’t even develop it
BF4 was considered the beginning of the end at launch sure, but by the end of its lifecycle it was pulling huge numbers and great reception. They had basically FIXED things like bad netcode and many more fixes that made it the best battlefield had been yet imo as bf3 lacked grander scale in terms of mechanics and content
Bf3 not being bad company 3 was an issue pre launch, but almost immediately people stopped caring because bf3 is almost universally beloved now for its huge balls and incredible rush map design and more enjoyable vehicles than Bad Company
And finally, it’s not about the quarter… the release date is literally only a week after BF1 and CoD was already pulling in huge fps numbers about a month before. It’s been observed many times before too that people tend not to buy multiple games before Christmas, and often will only have one or two games to choose from for Christmas… which means nobody is taking a risk on Titanfall 2 (both for the reasons you stated, and because of the release window)
Pre orders aren’t even the biggest issue in gaming now, for me it’s game tiers, where a game releases with 3 different editions, with the most expensive one being like $150. Which means the actual game is $150 and the lower editions are just incomplete copies.
The video game industry is currently facing a big wave of layoffs, and even contract developers at PlayStation first-party studio Naughty Dog aren’t immune. Kotaku has learned that the maker of hits like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and The Last of Us Part II has begun cutting contracts short for dozens of workers....
Not a lot, but such incidents are a clear indication that we are slowly seeing the Covid effect wearing off at its entirety. Offices and companies are way too eager to get back to the pre-covid grind. Their long held products are now being released.
I am also working in a IT industry and them slowly cutting off our Work-from-home days under the guise of low productivity is disheartening to say the least.
Wanna know which game I last broke my “no pre-orders” rule for?
No Man’s Sky. The game that was a tech demo for the first year or so after release. It’s become a hell of a game since then, but it taught me a valuable lesson and I haven’t bought a game since then.
It’s kinda the natural progression of late stage hypercapitalism though. Used to be that you spent all your money up front, then your sales recouped your investment and hopefully generated you a profit. Once game companies figured out OTA patches they realized that they can push a lot of QA back until after release and use pre-orders and day 1 sales to fund it. Then with DLC they realized that they can sell the untested skeleton of a game up front and use presales and early sales to fund development. The natural progression seems to be the Star Citizen model, where you get huge chunks of your sales up front and use that to determine what you’ll develop and when (if ever) you’ll release it
Gabe Newell on why game delays are okay: 'Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever.' (www.pcgamer.com)
GTA 6’s Publisher Says Video Games Should Theoretically Be Priced At Dollars Per Hour (www.forbes.com) angielski
While Take-Two is riding high on their announcement that a GTA 6 trailer is coming, its CEO has some…interesting ideas on how much video games could cost, part of a contingent of executives that believe games are underpriced, given their cost, length or some combination of the two.
How has Cities:Skylines II been for you?
Just looking to gather opinions and thoughts from this community that were thinking of trying C:S II now that the game is out publicly....
Cities Skylines 2 dev stuck to launch date despite “potential kicking” (www.pcgamesn.com) angielski
Space sim Squadron 42 is "feature-complete" and gunning for Starfield's lunch with massive new video (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Squadron 42 is the single player campaign of Star Citizen, that is supposed to launch as a separate game. It's basically a small portion of Star Citizen, but with a story and ending. I'm still not confident; waited too long for that.
When was a game's price worth it to you?
Say a simple (hours enjoyed playing)/(price of game) equation. How many hours (you enjoyed) per $ do you think is reasonable/expected? Or is there other criteria for you?...
Cities Skylines 2 - Review Thread - (76/100 OpenCritic) angielski
Game Information...
Well, Cities: Skylines 2 is here, and it's another broken game release. angielski
I don’t really understand how people make the review threads, but we’re sitting at a 77 on OpenCritic right now. Many were worried about game performance after the recommended specs were released, but it looks like it’s even worse than we expected. It sounds like the game is mostly a solid release except for the...
So, Microsoft now owns Activision Blizzard. How will this affect the rest of the industry? (www.gamesindustry.biz)
Lords of the Fallen - Review Thread
Game Information...
Lords of the Fallen earns Mostly Negative Steam rating as Hexworks share tips for crash and performance bugs (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Well well well, if it isn’t my old friend: day 1 performance issues.
Star Trek: Infinite Review Thread
Game Information...
Witchfire Development Roadmap (www.theastronauts.com) angielski
Next Fest October 2023 - NOW LIVE! (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Steam Next Fest is a week-long celebration featuring hundreds of FREE playable demos as well as developer livestreams and chats. Players try out upcoming games on Steam pre-release, developers gather feedback and build an audience ahead of their Steam launch, everyone wins!
Why CCP haven't stopped trying to make an EVE Online shooter for 15 years (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
CD Projekt Spent Roughly $125 Million Turning Cyberpunk 2077 Around Post-Launch (www.ign.com) angielski
Ubisoft just added Denuvo to Assassins Creed Mirage via a day-1 patch a few minutes ago. AFTER all the major reviews went online. (meta.masto.host) angielski
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/0c095e3d-ac73-49eb-b142-65d0c7d2b8af.webp
Thanks to everyone who suggested i play Titan fall 2 (lemmy.world) angielski
What a fun game . Wish it was a little longer though .
RoboCop: Rogue City | Pre-Order Trailer (www.youtube.com) angielski
Last Of Us Studio Naughty Dog Is Cutting Developers (kotaku.com) angielski
The video game industry is currently facing a big wave of layoffs, and even contract developers at PlayStation first-party studio Naughty Dog aren’t immune. Kotaku has learned that the maker of hits like Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and The Last of Us Part II has begun cutting contracts short for dozens of workers....
Capcom President Says ‘Game Prices Are Too Low’ (kotaku.com) angielski
lol. lmao.