I really hope this bites them if the industry goes less IP-centric. We’ve gotten a slow build of “From the developers of…” fan hype, and I don’t think a big “2” matters as much as it used to.
Elden Ring, Overwatch, Cyberpunk, Genshin Impact, were all technically “new franchises” but built insane followings off either good marketing or high knowledge of their studio. So now all MS can do is copy the death path of their parrot studios like 343 Industries and The Coalition, which were built to try to tentpole their old franchises made by better studios.
This is an excellent explanation of why the layoffs were a terrible idea.
I wouldn’t have volunteered $30-$40 for Hi-Fi Rush on release because of my low budget for new singleplayer games - but I did play it through Game Pass, and knowing how good it is now I would’ve paid more. Similarly, MS has put out many “mixed” games that are perfect for certain types of people but not many others. Those are the things that keep people on Game Pass. Nobody needs to be paying $100 a year to keep playing the few familiar live service games they know.
The “unsubscribe” button is really easy to reach the month Game Pass stops putting out anything new and interesting, and that’s coming soon now that they have no one ready to put out these surprise hits.
For what? They can’t even use a lot of these IPs anymore. Fallout is now associated with 76 unless you’re thinking of Obsidian. Bethesda as a whole is not trusted for big RPGs after Starfield. Blizzard is a shell of its old self, cutting interest in Warcraft, Starcraft, and Overwatch. Id has been doing okay, but has had a lot of brain drain, and they definitely don’t produce the “live service hits” MS appears to be looking for - just things people would love to see on Game Pass and discard. There’s rumors even Call of Duty is struggling to retain relevance in new releases.
…We about to see Crash vs Spyro Autobattle Royale?
Taking a look at big-cash high profile releases like Redfall and Starfield…is “guaranteed failure” what they’re going for? Because those indie games were pretty much the main reason I kept subscribing to game pass.
The biggest stumble seems to be from releasing without the requirement initially, and making the game available for sale in non-PSN countries.
Other studios like EA and Microsoft have traditionally required their accounts on online games since release; but unless I’m wrong, those accounts are also available in more countries.
To summarize or if the link breaks, one of the devs “knew beforehand” they’d have to require PSN accounts post launch, but disabled them for a smooth launch. That’s interesting, but as long as Sony was acting as publisher I feel like the blame still goes on them for selling the game to non-PSN countries initially.
Valve can remove games from sale for any reason they like - it’s been a point of consumer contention when they are accused of censorship for certain risque anime games, too.
They can completely remove a game from sale if it turns out to be bricking people’s computers or function terribly. (Sony did this with Cyberpunk on PSN, without CDPR’s approval)
There may be suspicion the game is not legitimate for sale, for instance it illegally uses someone else’s work.
Going country-specific, if a game is revealed to be slightly less than universally positive to the perfectly infallible, totally-not-genocidal Chinese Communist Party, they may want to stop sales in China.
If a game lets you buy it in Tanzania, download it in Tanzania, and then to play, has you sign an agreement that says “I truthfully state that I do not live in Tanzania”, then that bone-headed agreement reflects poorly on Valve, so they have almost a legal need to take it out of sale in that country.
Basically, each country has its own laws of sale. Having those switches to turn off sales in certain places is important for the store’s own safety. While 60% of the blame for selling a faulty product goes to the manufacturer, 40% still goes to the storefront that chose to stock and sell that faulty good. In this case, the fault was specific to the country of play.
There was a theory that the purchase restrictions were put in place by Valve, not Sony (because those countries couldn’t make an account without violating TOS). If so, Valve might shortly remove the restrictions.
I expect media companies to be greedy. What feels absurd is when they act out of blind, unmonetized efforts of control that seem to hurt their bottom line - like forcing employees to commute instead of work from home.
There’s a Smash Bros mechanic called Stale Moves where repeating the same move many times causes it to deal less damage. It feels like a worthwhile topic to delve on for more interesting fights, but given the way knockback works there could be a better target than just damage adjustment.
Let’s say that I’m a game developer, and also a terrible person. After beating my game, it shows a victory screen that says “You know, Hitler might have been right!” Everyone will shit on the game; and that’s just normal player reaction.
Now, it’s easy to predict that no one would be so negative towards giant exposed breasts - except yes, plenty of people are. For all the porn-obsessed pervs out there, tons of people just want to enjoy an action adventure game without cringing distractions.
Don’t believe me? Look at Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The game lost a bunch of its potential sales to players that might enjoy a sweeping JRPG, but couldn’t stand frequent boob/butt shots of its overendowed and subservient female main character.
If you’ve ever seen isometric pixel sprites, authors often draw those first “naked” to get the shape right. If they show an in development model that’s naked, and later have added clothes, is that then “censorship”? No of course it fucking isn’t.