My understanding is that Immortals of Aveum was the first output from a pivot of the genuinely terrific EA originals brand that gave us the likes of It Takes Two, A Way out, Unraveled, and lots more. It used to be a program that helped indie devs publish their games with EA only recouping their costs. Immortals of Aveum, ironically, had none of that magic. It was basically a Marvel story baked into a CoD campaign with magic instead of bullets.
Ideally, this will tell the suits that this pivot was a mistake and they’ll go back to “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But they’re much more likely to overmonetize everything into oblivion while laying off massive chunks of their workforce.
Things got very dire in the '10s, but there’s been a bit of a course correction in recent years, at least with EA. It Takes Two and the Star Wars Jedi games were microtransaction free and wonderful experiences. Only It Takes Two could really be considered weird and quirky, but it was phenomenal. First party games are also typically exceptions to the modern AAA paradigm.
I’d gladly agree to pay more in exchange for a legally binding agreement that higher prices mean video games free of predatory monetization and reasonable pay and job security for the people making the games. But we both know that they have no intention of doing the right thing, no matter how high the box price. They’re already raking in record profits while laying off huge chunks of their workforce and giving the c-suite ever-increasing annual bonuses.
They’ve perpetuated the lie that microtransactions were a necessity and the $60 price was unsustainable for such a long time that people actually believe it. Now they want to increase the box price while keeping the predatory monetization, having their cake and eating it too.
This. I genuinely believe that in the near future indie games will be the sole torch-bearer for what I would call “traditional gaming”. Tighter, more focused experiences with no microtransactions or sanitized, inoffensive bloat. Games that are offline and don’t require any server handshake to function. And as the technology available to them advances, it will enable indie devs to be more and more ambitious with their vision.
It’s a compelling proposition, and not one Microsoft can compete with. At least not in the mobile/tablet space. Cloud gaming is all well and good, but native hardware will always be superior. Microsoft is crazy not to be considering a 1st party handheld like the steam deck. Or at least a gaming-centric UI for small screen devices. Even just integrating something like the Xbox UI would be an improvement.
Your point isn’t without merit, but your framing of it certainly is. The comparison made in the initial post is apples to oranges, but your experience is nothing more than anecdote and implying digital is universally cheaper is absurd. Allow me to counter your anecdote with one of my own:
Only a few months after release, I picked up an Xbox copy of Cyberpunk 2077, brand new from a big box retail chain and with a complimentary steelbook case, for $5.
Ah yes, let’s patch a harmless exploit in our purely single player game. Surely that’s far more important than any of the gameplay-degrading/breaking bugs the game carries, many of which have been carried forward from Skyrim. Can’t be giving the player the freedom to choose whether or not they want to accumulate credits faster than intended.
Even if your PC isn’t up to the task of running the game, it’s worth a shot to install it and see if you can do just enough to open the console, even if it’s at 2 fps. Unless you’re running a Celeron processor or something, in which case don’t bother.
That’s a valid point. Games released in the next 2-3 years should be probably be given a pass. My admittedly layman’s perspective is that any indie game deep enough into development that switching engines isn’t feasible most likely wouldn’t require another 4 years to ship.
Apple is no doubt considering moving more heavily into the gaming space. They’re looking for more revenue streams to keep feeding the corporate fantasy of perpetual growth, and there are only so many sweat shop laborers they can exploit. Wouldn’t surprise me at all for them to buy a publisher like EA and create some steam competitor (or just leverage the Mac app store).
Let me preface this by saying I would not be in favor of this acquisition, even though Nintendo are a bunch of overly litigious pricks that abuse the copyright system in the name of profits and treat their partners with open hostility and their eShop is a shovelware shitfest running on hardware that was already antique by the time it launched. But I really don’t see how this is anything more than Phil Spencer being a bit too transparent. Jim Ryan and Sony would jump at the chance to acquire Nintendo just as eagerly. Both PS and Xbox have been aggressively pursuing acquisitions and consolidation for years now, and Nintendo would be a crown jewel in any gaming publisher’s portfolio.
Sony and Nintendo are both terrible, hypocritical companies in their own right. That by no means absolves Microsoft of being who they are, and the pro-consumer tactic Xbox has employed for the past 5 or 6 years is definitely a calculated move and the result of them falling hard after the Don Mattrick era, but to say that Microsoft (and by that I assume you mean Xbox) is terrible for gaming is a bad take. The gaming landscape is better because Xbox exists. Competition and choice empower the consumer. If you think Sony wouldn’t be an even shittier company without the competition Xbox provides, you really don’t understand how these avaricious corporate conglomerates operate.
What needs to happen is regulation. Pro-consumer governing bodies (which don’t exist in the US, but the EU has been on a roll) mandating the right to transfer a digital license.
As for the stores, Xbox offers GameStop a small percentage of the revenue from every digital game purchased on a console sold by GameStop. That feels like a healthy compromise for an all-digital business model.
I’m not sure why you’re trying to convince me of the merits of physical media? I did not, and do not, disagree. It’s a more flexible option, and more options is always better for the consumer. But the reality is that physical media, in its current iteration, doesn’t offer all that much protection. The only universal benefit of physical media is the ability to regift or resell. It’s a great benefit, but it hardly liberates consumers from dependence on servers.
As for my original point, it simply read to me as if this person was giving the GameStop exec credit for something he did not say. I wanted to make sure his comments were seen in an accurate light.