It would be. The trick is that this initiative is coupled with a better UI for Windows on handhelds, like Valve made for SteamOS. If not this partnered one, then the official one will.
I do see them stopping soon. Those deals are benefiting basically no one anymore. Partners like Square Enix are doing way better by putting their games on PC without an exclusivity period. Sony’s not growing their console business over the previous generation, even when their competition has been destroyed. At some point it’s just money down the drain.
There’s a beta test branch on Steam that was uploaded 5 months ago, and the game has been age rated in South Korea. Yes, that game is coming. For good reason, it’s also the belle of the ball when it comes to marketing deals, so as much as it’s a meme to say maybe it’s at the next Nintendo Direct, it might be at the next Nintendo Direct. For everyone’s sake, I hope it gets its release date soon so that we can stop talking about it.
In general, I’d agree that games are getting better, if for no other reason that there are so many made these days that eventually you’ll find something great.
I’m totally fine with playing a character who is always a shitty person, but when the world was littered with those characters, it was undesirable to spend any more time in it, especially considering my issues with the story’s delivery as well.
I don’t think I came to it with many expectations other than that people praised it for the writing, but I found the characters to nearly universally be abrasive and the story delivered via info dumps.
I played BG1 and 2 for the first time shortly before the release of BG3, and I just wanted to hear Irenicus talk more.
Disco Elysium, on the other hand, just did not hit for me. The only things I hear about it are praise, but my friends list is filled with people who played it for a few hours, like I did, and stopped, so maybe the dissenters just aren’t so vocal.
I play and enjoy most genres at this point, but my favorite has to be Skullgirls. There are 18 characters and so many ways to combine them that you can still come up with new strategies in this game over a decade after its release.
An assumption that each employee costs them about $150k/year in salary/office space/benefits. There are lots of ways it can be more complicated than that, including the fact that they’re in Sweden, but last I heard, $150k/year/developer was about what you’d expect to pay in the US, if a company was interested in replicating this kind of development in a place where labor costs are probably highest.
From the same interview, they said they scaled up from a team of about 65 for It Takes Two to a team of about 80 for Split Fiction, which they made in four years. Back of the napkin math means that Split Fiction was made for about $50M. I find game budgets to be really interesting to track lately, because so many have become so reckless with them that it’s great to see what can be made if you scope down.