NuPNuA

NuPNuA, rok temu

Because this won’t give MS a monopoly in the slightest. There’s still tons of Devs and publisher’s out there on various states of first, second and third party relationships with MS, Sony and Nintendo and new indie Devs pop up almost weekly. It gives them a massive advantage having CoD as a first party Gamepass title, yes, but that’s not what a monopoly means.

NuPNuA, rok temu

All three of them that actually get any focus under ABK at the moment? If anything we might get to see some of the ones usually ignored have a day in the sun if MS wants to diversify their Gamepass offerings. We may get that Tony Hawk’s 3&4 remake rather than Volition being thrown in the CoD mines, a Crash or Spyro game with Rares involvement, etc.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Benefits me as an Xbox owning, Gamepass subscribing consumer.

NuPNuA, rok temu

I mean, I’ve not been particularly disappointed at how Disney has handled the Fox properties. They’ve had some duds with the Star Wars and Marvel lines, but the stuff that’s come to D+ under the Fox banner, Solar Opposites, all the Simpsons, new Futurama, films like Banshees of Inershirin, Prey, No One Will Save You, etc have all been pretty good.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Played about an hour and a half last night. It seems essentially a glorified Trek themed Stellaris expansion. Which given it was only £25 quid I don’t mind too much.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Hi-Fi Rush by Tango is Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam. And came out during the run you listed above.

NuPNuA, rok temu

How many battles with space pirates do you usually get into on the way to work.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Everyone I know with a quest speaks quite highly of it and how freeing it is compared to tethered headsets.

NuPNuA, rok temu

The PS5 is selling like gangbusters, outpacing PS4 sales from what I understand, however VR is a much more niche product.

NuPNuA, rok temu

It seems like it’s sticking around this time, but will take a few more gens to become a mainstream product with appeal to people beyond tech nerds.

The problem with previous vr is that the compent parts weren’t ready to combine into a good experience. Computers couldn’t produce realistic enough graphics at the 90+FPS needed for smooth gameplay, screens didn’t have the resolution and colour depth to recreate the real world, the processing units made the headsets huge and bulky.

This time it started at a decent base experience and has been getting better since, a few more gens for it to become easy and quick to use and it will pick right up.

NuPNuA, rok temu

It’s fascinating how quickly the PSVR2 dropped out of all conversation after launch.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Because like all the tech industry, they grew massively on the back of low interest rates since 2008 where investors saw better returns putting money into companies than sitting on it, now the interest rates have shot up again post Covid, they need to show their investors they can make better returns than the 5%+ they’d make just leaving the money in the bank. Hence the cost cutting by sacking staff and gouging of customers by price increases.

NuPNuA, rok temu

That’s only because people in the US and Asia overpaid for their games. We weren’t paying that for microcomputer games in Europe.

NuPNuA, rok temu

It seems most artforms reach the point where the tools are available for the indie efforts to be as good as the corporate stuff.

Games seem to be rapidly reaching the tipping point, and then all the big players have to offer is throwing more money at projects with no guarantee they’ll be as enjoyable.

NuPNuA, rok temu

I wonder how long EA will put out more interesting stuff for given Wild Hearts and Immortals if Avenum both flopped. Star Wars will always be a guaranteed seller though.

NuPNuA, rok temu

I agree you don’t have to justify it, but I also feel like you don’t need to glorify it either. I’m not morally opposed to it and jah knows I’ve don’t some piracy in my day, but people who have to make a big statement about it as you’ve done above invite the arguments from people who are morally opposed.

NuPNuA, rok temu

It sucks that skinflints in the west region hopping to save a few bob made companies wary of regional pricing in the digital age.

NuPNuA, rok temu

In America they have been. In the UK I’ve watched games raise from £10 on my Amstrad in the 80s to £70 on my Series X now.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Not every country was playing the NES then. Games on the formats popular in Europe were much cheaper.

NuPNuA, rok temu

That’s pretty good. Play anywhere across an ecosystem is always the right move. Sony expecting people to double dip on PS5/PC releases is going to look pretty old pretty soon.

NuPNuA, rok temu

This is what MS are gearing up to fight with their acquisitions and infrastructure. If you can buy a game on iTunes and it works across your Mac, AppleTV, iPhone, etc, then they need to have the same in the Xbox brand across console, PC, cloud, etc. Sony are only now putting games on PC years late and that business model is looking tired already, multi device is the future.

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Exactly, people have been buying worse switch ports for higher prices than the PS/XB versions for the portability for years now, phones shouldn’t be different if it’s a playable port optimised for them.

NuPNuA, rok temu

If you’re in the eco-system, the idea that you can play a game on your phone, pick it up on the TV at home, then at your deck on the Mac at the weekend is pretty sweet. I can’t see them making a high end console though, those tend to be money syncs and are going to have smaller audiences as mobile & cloud grow acceptable performance for the mass market. This is why MS are making moves they are. They’ll support the home console for a while as they can’t lose the legacy Xbox audience, but I think sometime next decade they may make Gamepass/Xbox store a multiformat service and phase out dedicated hardware.

NuPNuA, rok temu

I think that’s definitely what’s going to happen. The gaming market is going to see some huge disruption in the next few years as companies who didn’t want to bother with the console market can start an ecosystem based around platform agnostic stores/ecosytems.

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I think they’re banking on the handheld PC market picking up for that. Obviously Steamdeck was a non-starter for native as it uses Linux, but they threw their weight behind the ROG Ally and packaged that with several months of Gamepass.

NuPNuA, rok temu

I played it on Seriex X at launch and it was fine. Few graphical or animation issues here and there you expect in a big open world game but perfectky playable.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Sony did that bacuse they’ve skirted laws about refunds in some parts of the world for years and CDPR inadvertently highlighted that. MS, Valve and GOG left the game up and issued refunds when requested as that should be a normal part of doing business.

NuPNuA, rok temu

If the word is used regularly in British and Australian language, it’s cultural imperialism for Americans to ask us to stop using it because they’ve decided it’s offensive.

NuPNuA, rok temu

That’s a pretty good line up. Couple of games I was going to get anyway, and some I was less sure off so will happily try as part of the sub.

NuPNuA, rok temu

It’s simple, this is the one set between Yakuza 6 and 7 but also during 7 and then between 7 and 8, where you play as Kiryu from the first 7 games but not going under the name of Kiryu as he went into hiding after 6. Oh and this game is an action game, but the next game in 2024 also starring undercover Kiryu and also the protagonist of 7, Ichiban is a turn based RPG. See simple, lol.

NuPNuA, rok temu

This is one of the few games I was planning to get at launch this year, so this is welcome news.

NuPNuA, rok temu

I’ve played though the game twice on the Series X and didn’t have any if that. Once that got the frame rate up to a solid 60 in the first big patch, it’s a really solid feeling title.

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No, everything must be a conspiracy.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Yep, it’s been solid, at least on Series X for a few years now since the patch that brought it to a solid 60fps.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Yeah, but MS games aren’t console exclusive. They come out on PC day one two which is a bigger audience than both consoles combined. Given the player numbers Starfield really hasn’t suffered due to not being on PS. In some countries it’s doing exactly what a console exclusive should and getting people to pick up an Xbox.

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But you made that decision knowing that Bethesda games were going to be exclusive to the MS ecosystem.

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Gaming isn’t bedroom coders knocking out games in basic for microcomputers any more, it’s a huge entertainment industry and that’s how those industries work.

This is no different from Disney pulling Fox properties of other steaming platforms to put them on Disney+ since they brought them out.

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No, but Oblivion came to PS3 later and Skyrim was outright broken on PS3, then Sony scuppered their console mod plans by not allowing deep enough system access. Safe to say they probably didn’t have the best relationship.

NuPNuA, rok temu

If you don’t think a company as big as MS did a cost/benefit analysis before they made the decision I don’t know what to tell you. Of course any product available to more people sells better, but MS are playing a longer game. If previous Bethesda games are anything to go on, people will be talking about, modding, posting clips, etc of this game for a while and that’s tons of free advertising for XB and Gamepass.

NuPNuA, rok temu

How do you think marketing works? Someone posts a cool thing they’ve done in Starfield, and someone else gets some FOMO and decides to buy the game, sub to Gamepass, get an Xbox to play it, etc.

No not everyone is pirating the game, a lot of people on Lemmy may be as this is an echo chamber of techie types, but the general audience don’t even know how to, and if they prefer to play on console, can’t.

Clearly you have beef with Bethesda, and are letting it cloud your judgement here, but the fact of the matter is lots of people are playing and enjoying the game as is, out the box before any mods are officially available.

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Over one game? I thought Fallout 4 was a disappointing step back from New Vegas and 76 was a misjudged project that turned up messy and broken and I’ve never even looked at playing. The last game of theirs I truly enjoyed pre Starfield was Skyrim, over a decade ago. I’m not white knighting them, you clearly have an irrational hatred of them and are unable to admit when they do something positive, a common issue today when people turn hating something into their identity and are unable to ever move from the stance. Like most Devs, they’ve had their ups and downs and the ups should be praised and the downs criticised.

NuPNuA, rok temu

Yeah, I’d like to know where that comes from, especially when so many people buy FIFA and Cod and that’s it for the year.

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We knew that already, Phil’s been pretty open about it.

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The size of the games they make with the amount of variables, I can understand how some stuff gets through QA. I’m not just talking about bugs though, stuff like touching up the graphics in the last year, getting ID to help tighten the gunplay, etc.

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I wanted it to be a big Bethesda RPG in space, and I got exactly that and I’m happy. People seem to have convinced themselves the game was going to be all kinds of things it never ever hinted at and now they’re upset it isn’t.

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That second paragraph has nothing to do with the quality of the game Bethesda Studio made though, not that Bethesda Softworks/Zenimax don’t deserve criticism for the HR issue, but it’s not fair to put that on Todd and his team.

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I had the same experience with CP. 50 hours put in at launch and had a good time. Yet you’d think the game killed players dog the way the chatter online went.

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Yeah, it took me ages to realise the prompt was at the bottom of the screen, I didn’t even want to change them, I was just wondering why it set off such a wobbler with the bald bloke.