They are just lying. I don't trust this response for a single moment. We have seen how the slope as far as game monetization practices goes is in fact slippery.
Sports games already use in-game ads. They will keep going for as long as players take it.
Crowdfunding-driven projects often have depressing fates, but probably not even a partial result would have existed if not for that.
Feels like if it was not for that Evo drama at the year they were selected as one of the competing games, maybe they would have sold well enough to finish.
I wonder if part of the reason they add these games by eyedropper is to use them as hype tools.
The Switch 2 might be announced any day now, what is going to happen to NSO? Will they actually port them because it's tied to a subscription rather than a standalone purchase? Or will they start over again?
They try to say that the screen is bigger, but at that point they could just play on a TV, since they need to be with their PS5 at home.
Also mystifying that they say a tablet with a bigger screen would be inconvenient because you couldn't play it on the bus. You can't play this thing on the bus either.
I don't think this is a console war thing. I just think IGN is a sellout rag that rates games however game companies tell them to. Their ratings are consistently unexplainable by anyone with sense.
Enjoying Baldur's Gate 3 but I think I missed out on all romances apparently. because I didn't start them on Act 1. That kinda sucks. Still, just got up to the Last Light Inn and the story is pretty interesting so far.
Is anyone believing they would not have layoffs anyway? They are likely just trying to pin their cost-cutting plans on game devs who protested against their ridiculous scheme. Comes to mind that the money their clients were already paying is the money that would have paid for those employees' wages.
Because it's deeply dysfunctional how much of our society is driven by this shortsighted approach. A lot people are not surprised by it at this point, but just explaining and accepting that shareholder value is the only thing that matters to them doesn't really fix the issues. And there's a lot more issues caused by this than just how fun some games are.
We are beyond asking how it works or why, we should be asking what should be done about it.
What he is doing sounds reasonable on the surface but it's a rhetorical trick.
This is about getting players in forever live services to keep paying forever even if the game is not adding anything more to make it worth it. There is a hint of merit of paying for a game that you enjoy a lot but don't forget how today games are endlessly padded out with grind and daily missions to keep players coming back out of habit, delaying access to what they really want to get, rather than because they are enjoying it. Nevermind that these tactics are also what gets people impatient and buying Shark Cards, for instance. It's why the freemium model became so commonly used. He wants to profit in the mean time too.