Not sure if many will join me on it, but with Microsoft going on the death march for studios, this might be the first of their major releases I don’t even bother with on Game Pass. After all, they fired Tango Gameworks, who knows when they’ll cut these devs loose.
I definitely wish there was more negotiation with tech library companies about this. It makes sense for movies - it’s a one-time experience, you only see the supporting studios’ logos one time, and it’s just building anticipation for the opening moments of the movie. But games are things people play twenty times a week. Someone might see the logos more if they play in shorter sessions, and maybe even avoid playing for a night because they’re familiar with the two minutes of setup to get to “actually playing”.
I even wish there was more effort to put gaming menus before the launch. A long time ago, Steam standardized a server picker for their own games, so you could skip “launching the game, hitting Server Browser”, instead just open the server list, double click one, and then that’s your “launching” task taking you to the thing you want to play. Even consoles could do this, even for games using matchmaking. I remember this being something the PS5 promoted in its menus but, not having a PS5, I’m curious if many games followed though.
I had a lot of fun with my Vita even without hacking it. It had a longer lifetime than people realize, in part through digital sales and indie games that were planning to do PS3/PS4 releases anyway.
I have an idea for the practice that could help us better explore practical uses. Basically, a company may train an AI off an actor’s voice, but that actor retains full non-transferable ownership/control of any voices generated from that AI.
So, if a game is premiering a new game mode that needs 15 new lines from a character, but their actor is busy drinking Captain Morgan in their pool, the company can generate those 15 lines from AI, but MUST have a communication with the actor where they approve the lines, and agree on a price for them.
It would allow for dynamic voice moments in a small capacity, and keep actors in business. It would still need some degree of regulation to ensure no one pushes gross incentives.
I think the issue is, asking people to set up PSN was the plan all along - and they somewhat ineptly realized months after their hit game’s release that caused a problem for Steam users not in PSN countries.
Xbox and EA all require accounts for their games too, but they’ve done that forever, and are a bit more territory-neutral.
It’s a question of whether to reward a player that can see that the opponent is using rock, take a step back, start building paper, and send them out even if they take time doing it; versus a player that just super-optimizes building an army of rock to send against armies of paper, and give them the best chance of winning by perfectly kiting every attack on the field.
There’s certainly an argument that some groups would like the tournament of APM, but I think a lot of people didn’t bother with high level StarCraft because they saw Koreans clicking 15 times a second and figured they can’t keep up. It’s like how fighting games work to demonstrate they’re not rewarding button mashing.
My issue is less around changing the story, more around incompleteness.
They’re making the turnout of certain events hazy and mysterious to allow for multiple future turnouts, and let them keep merchandising certain characters. And, they’re letting the conclusion keep going for multiple games.
It’s more of a monetary strategy than a storytelling one. Notably, FFXIV sells each of its expansions, but each one has an ending that feels like a victory and a satisfying conclusion to a story even when it sets new things up.
There’s been one debacle based around PSN, as a service, only being available in certain countries, and Helldivers initially launching in others to simplify their launch.
As of yet, I could believe there are Sony execs that didn’t even realize such a gap existed for their PC releases, and are still deciding what they can legally do. (Premiering their service in new territories isn’t simple, and a lot of their PC investment, plus their multiplayer workings, might be based around the account expectations)
No matter how poorly thought Sony’s international release plan is for PC, that’s far easier to assume brief incompetence than malice around. Firing people who made a GOTY is a whole different level of evil.
No, YOU’RE the one claiming speculation. The null statement is “Without a PR statement, we don’t know who delisted the game”. The speculation was “We believe Sony delisted it.” It just means he’s not satisfied by any evidence in place. You don’t demand sources to make someone disprove a speculative.
Do NOT trust journalists using hazy sources like job postings, replies from support, or patent claims as proof of anything. There’s plenty of places looking to generate headlines and clicks.
Support techs do not have access to insider industry information. They deal with dozens of region-blocked game support issues a day, and in 95% of cases that block was placed by the publisher. The tech is likely just using that term out of assumption and familiarity.
I’m not saying it’s impossible that Sony are the culprit, but a random support reply to an individual is not how we’d find out. It’s happened before that a Valve official puts out a correction to something support says.
They should have been part of the original restriction and it was noticed when the restriction was put in place for Tsushima. This was noticed and executed independently by Valve.