Is War Thunder even a good game? The only time I hear about it is after these leaks. Then it’s like viral marketing and I think “this game must be awesome if people are committing crimes to get minor Stat changes” then I forget about it for a few months until the next leak.
I don’t see how it being software makes it different than any other good.
If I advertised a car with GPS and promised next year it will be updated with live traffic data. Then I just sold a bunch of cars and decided, nah thats expensive, I am just going to leave it as is. You better believe lawsuits would be headed my way, I don’t see how this is much different. In both examples you can still use the product, it’s just not the product that was ultimately promised. Maybe I would have bought a different brand of car that already offers live traffic on their GPS, maybe I was willing to spend more on the game/car because the feature that was promised, never came.
Update, it still doesn’t make sense but now I have no access. The moment I signed into the store and bought Baldurs Gate 3, I lost access to all my games offline or on. How I was able to previously play unsigned in is beyond me. Probably accepted some update when signing in and was previously grandfathered into really old terms would be my only guess.
So update! I just had to sign in to buy Balders Gate. Now none of my games work that I previously downloaded, offline or on. So weird. Wish I played through a few of those before connecting.
If Xbox ever gains majority market share your choices go out the window.
Wasn’t there a quote from a Microsoft exec stating exactly that is essentially the only plan. They either have majority market by 2027 or they leave the gaming industry.
I love how it’s all or nothing, they don’t care about gaming. Even if that exec quoted didn’t have the power to are the division, it shows a lot about what their plans are. And as always, it’s not good for the consumer.
The best thing the consumer can hope for is they grow too big and regulatory agencies grow some balls and split them up like old Bell. That’s the only way I could see it benefitting consumers in the future. Even if MS left the gaming industry, they are not selling everything off piecemeal like a tag sale. It’s all getting sold to Facebook or a better fit would be apple. They already have the hardware side, they could whip up a console real quick, and they already have the marketing on their side. Although both FB and Apple have tons of cash to burn, I could see FB buying it, developing a sub par console in the hopes it can bridge the gap until they can get everyone in VR goggles. That would be almost as bad for consumers as MS’ Monopoly…
Also, I am not implying either of those companies could afford to buy those purely with cash. It’s just if you have massive cash reserves it’s usually indicative of planning on new investments. Looking at the list again, and sorting by reserves as a percent of value, I could also see Google and Amazon being contenders. Amazon already has spent money developing devices, although that has turned out poorly for them, so they might be hesitant to dump a huge amount of money into something that hasn’t worked well for them in the past. Google has the money, they have power, but little to no experience in gaming world beyond mobile gaming.
Why did the genre go on life support? I have been missing a couch co-op game since the days of PS2, my wife and I used to love playing together. Speaking of old RPGs, anyone know if there are any plans to reboot Champions of Norath? That used to be our favorite game.
I also get confused by all these RPG prefixes, probably too old. In my day I would walk into the gamestop or Babbages and just say “got any new good RPG games” then they would point me to one of the Final Fantasy games, and then I would say “actually I mean, do you have any new hack and slash RPG games?” Then they would say “no, but you can pre-order Call of Duty” and then I would rifle through the bargain bin, and then leave. Good times.
Which means I have essentially been asking for Baldurs Gate 3 for 18 years now (Champions 2 was released in 2005, a year after BG2).
No I didn’t. The announcement of their intentions to fully absorb Bethesda didn’t even come out until around the PS5’s release, and wasn’t completed until like 6 months after. Not everyone pays close attention to gaming news. And if you bought the console early on, there is a chance you never would have even heard about it, let alone completely understood the implications of the purchase.
I would rather it all die and force back to disks, or at least some guarantee you actually own the game.
All these services are going to become endlessly tiered with eventual extra dlc costs. They know most gamers spend $300 a year on games. So if Gamepass takes off, expect the base option to eventually be $15 a month, with tiers up to $40, maybe higher… who knows what whales will spend, especially if they throw in currency bonuses.
Then they will add in some in store currency and give the highest subscriber tiers extra Boxbux to spend on DLC… or probably literally loot boxes.
It would be neat to see support for a universal digital library system. Where it can only be checked to one person. If you want to sell the game, you uninstall and it provides you with a token number it generates. That unique number is tied to the copy of the game. You sell the token number, they now own the game. If they ever uninstall it, they get a new number to trade. Or libraries could lend them for free using the same system.