The exclusivity deals appear to have been good for no one involved: Epic, Square Enix, Sony, or customers, so I think we’ve seen the last of them outside of things Epic publishes themselves.
They paid more for it than they saw back in sales or expected new customers. What they’ve said publicly is that they won’t be using this strategy anymore, because it isn’t working. They claim free game giveaways are working, but I have my doubts as to how valuable those user acquisitions are.
They’re typically optimizing for fidelity and performance ahead of install size. Multiple LODs can balloon an install size quite quickly, but they’ll give you better bang for your buck in other areas, and storage space is a concern that dissipates more in time, as you upgrade to newer machines.
After 2 INK-credible years of Splatoon 3, regular updates will come to a close. Don’t worry! Splatoween, Frosty Fest, Spring Fest, and Summer Nights will continue with some returning themes!...
The second game even repurposed large parts of the not-particularly-impressive campaign of the first game. They weren’t going to fool me again by making me buy the same game a third time.
I don’t think it’s singling it out to say that the just-about-required subscription makes it less appealing to purchase, whereas most multiplayer games have the PC version as an option.
We weren’t per se. Only that a predominantly multiplayer game is a harder sell when the subscription is damn near mandatory, which is why there are so few multiplayer-only games on consoles that cost money up front anymore, and free to play games get an exception to the subscription service on PlayStation and Xbox.
As someone who grew up playing games like World of Warcraft and other AAA titles, I’ve seen how the gaming industry has evolved over the years—and not always for the better. One of the most disturbing trends is the rise of gacha games, which are, at their core, thinly veiled gambling systems targeting younger players. And I...
Without being a gacha game, World of WarCraft is guilty of a lot of the same stuff. You probably know people who flunked out of college due to the addiction, or have heard of parents who neglected their child over that game. It preys on a lot of the same impulses that Diablo and Diablo II seemed to have found by accident, before they were monetized by subscription fees and then microtransactions. And you can see a lot of the same in games like Destiny.
The core of lots of games revolve around random chance, and plenty of those exhibit no addictive behavior whatsoever. I’d certainly like to hear a research psychologist’s take on it though.
You could throw most of this same argument back at gachas. They’re just gambling because the world sucks, or something…
No, my understanding is that the reason people get addicted to this stuff is that we evolved to gather finite resources when they’re available, even if it’s rare, so we’re prey to systems like this that can control that rarity. WoW absolutely did this, just without putting a price on each interaction.
I think keeping you addicted so as to continue to paying a monthly subscription is bad on its own, and I don’t think it needs to be qualified by how much you spend overall if they’re still knowingly capitalizing on that addiction in an unregulated environment. But also, while I don’t know the answer to your question for a fact, I would imagine that they do have ways to spend unlimited money in that game if you’re so inclined.
Because I’d say the addiction is the issue. The biggest issue with gambling is the addiction. If you’re not addicted, you’re not spending time or money beyond your means. So I’d rather not broaden it to how much money it sucks out of you when the addiction is the issue. It all relies on the same principles that we know to be worth legal regulation when it’s acknowledged as gambling. I don’t know anyone who got addicted to Netflix, but they’ll “binge” shows because we no longer live in the era where we can only watch shows according to a broadcast schedule; plus sometimes, you just want some background noise while you’re doing something else, including a show you’ve seen a million times.
Any game that doesn’t last forever was robbed of doing so arbitrarily. If they never updated Palworld again, in its current form, it will last forever.
You can emulate machines that can run Windows, and that’s very effective at preservation. Wine is already better than modern Windows at running software that relies on deprecated dependencies. But live service is just purposely killing games that didn’t need to die.
The inevitable outcome for every live service game is that it becomes inoperable and unplayable, even the good ones. It doesn’t matter if it’s Suicide Squad or Fortnite. They all should still be preserved. Open source is appreciated but not necessary.
If someone 50 years from now wants to see what this game Fortnite was all about, they should be able to get a reasonable approximation of it by booting it up and playing with 100 other people. That’s what it means to preserve it. We’ve had and will continue to have competitive games that are not live service.
I’m way into fighting games. Even the ones with a battle pass and such can still be played offline (except maybe for 2XKO and Brawlhalla) and quite frankly can’t match the content churn that other genres do in the live service space.
I don’t think it’s a good argument to say that it’s okay for a game to inevitably die because they’re doing better right now. Brink, Overwatch 1, and HyperScape are fully dead, btw. I’d rather be able to pay $60 and have a game I can play forever than save money on a game that’s designed to self destruct.
Reality does not match that headline. Was this generated by AI to be something people wanted to read?
Yet, the PlayStation 5 Pro gives certain backwards-compatible PS4 games an added boost in resolution and framerate. Gamers on Reddit are hoping that Bloodborne will benefit from a 60fps boost on Sony’s upcoming machine.
“Gamers are hoping” is definitely not what that headline says. It links to a trailer from the original release 9 years ago. There’s no press release about the game being confirmed to run better than 30 FPS on PS5 Pro. This is garbage.
How many releases is a very different number than how much profit. Only a few of Microsoft’s releases likely account for a sizable percentage of the entire industry’s profits in a given year. The fact is that investors saw dollar signs, and the industry expanded to a level that the market doesn’t actually sustain. How many metroidvanias do you want to play in a given year? And given that Animal Well and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown came out this year, how likely are you to play Tales of Kenzera: Zau after you’ve bought and played those? Mass layoffs are not a good thing, but it’s a mathematical consequence of how much companies are permitted to expand relative to what people actually buy.
If people don’t buy your game, you don’t have money to pay people. Ideally, Surgent Studios would have developed their game inexpensively enough and with enough of a war chest that they wouldn’t have to lay people off after their first product didn’t sell enough copies, but that’s clearly not how they were funded. It sounds like the studio still exists, so maybe a smaller version of that team gets to take a crack at that second game, but you can’t pay people with money you don’t have, and we as the consumers have been well served by so many other games that it’s not much of a mystery why people didn’t turn up for this one.
I don’t know how you got from A to B on the Porsche. Embracer was funded largely by debt that they were expecting to get bailed out of by an investment that didn’t happen; the classic leveraged investment gone wrong. Microsoft absolutely could stomach whatever losses they face, especially since that was the whole idea a few years back when they started Game Pass, so them deciding to not follow through on that and tighten their belts now is a situation unique to them. At large, across the industry, are tons of companies making big bets like Suicide Squad or Concord or Warhaven that follow a live service template that’s been tapped out of customers and don’t work out, and even smaller companies following the traditional publisher model like Mimimi are so exhausted hunting for funding for their next game, just barely making it by on copies sold, that they decide instead to close up shop. That’ll happen when customer dollars are spread out around more games.
I know it’s not an option for consoles. Since the 7th gen, it was always moving in this direction. It’s probably one of dozens of reasons that PC overtook consoles in market share.
A friend of mine bought one at MSRP to add to his collection along with the likes of Anthem and Babylon’s Fall. He also picked up Suicide Squad for this reason, but he found that he unironically really enjoys that game while it’s still operational.
There’s another thread here that I posted covering this already, but it’s important to note that the game is DRM-free from Itch, and you’re free to back up the game. It sucks that they can delist the game even if you paid for it, but your digital library really is forever as long as you make backups yourself. That’s way better than the alternative where the store hosts it forever but you can’t back it up yourself (like Steam).
I have far more confidence that unzipping a file will continue to work into the future than this project that may fall out of sync with some future update on Steam.
Rumors have it this event will announce the PS5 Pro. I know the PS5 has been out for years now but does anyone feel like a pro version might be unnecessary? Current gen games already look great and run fine*...
Lots of people feel this way. This thing is going to come in at a price around $650 or $700, sell pretty much exclusively to the people who need the latest high-end PlayStation regardless, and then free up a bit of inventory of second hand vanilla PS5s. It’s a way to justify keeping prices high, because they can’t afford to lower them.
Luckily it’s DRM-free. Back up your installers. I wanted to call attention to this, because in a very unusual move, it’s being removed even for people who own a copy, whereas usually stores will only remove a game from sale and still host the files for existing owners to download.
Final Fantasy XVI is out now on Steam and Epic Games Store angielski
Source: twitter.com/…/1836043707352760570
UFO 50 | Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
Splatoon 3: After 2 INK-redible years, regular updates will come to a close. angielski
After 2 INK-credible years of Splatoon 3, regular updates will come to a close. Don’t worry! Splatoween, Frosty Fest, Spring Fest, and Summer Nights will continue with some returning themes!...
Microsoft Layoffs Hit Call of Duty Warzone Mobile, Which ‘Didn't Hit as Big as Hoped’ (www.ign.com) angielski
Gacha games are out of control. Gambling shouldn't be so widespread angielski
As someone who grew up playing games like World of Warcraft and other AAA titles, I’ve seen how the gaming industry has evolved over the years—and not always for the better. One of the most disturbing trends is the rise of gacha games, which are, at their core, thinly veiled gambling systems targeting younger players. And I...
Palworld faces the difficult choice of whether to become a live-service game or stay buy-to-play, PocketPair’s CEO says (automaton-media.com) angielski
Annapurna Video-Game Team Resigns, Leaving Partners Scrambling (www.bloomberg.com) angielski
Game consoles are now smartphones, and that's okay (www.spacebar.news) angielski
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Introducing Steam Families (youtu.be) angielski
Video Game Developers Are Leaving The Industry And Doing Something, Anything Else (aftermath.site) angielski
Sony announces the PS5 Pro with a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and AI upscaling (www.theverge.com) angielski
$700, and the side by sides look barely different, from my perspective. The chat seemed to have the same opinion.
Satisfactory 1.0 (www.satisfactorygame.com) angielski
No one wanted these PS5 Concord discs until Sony stopped making them (arstechnica.com) angielski
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The future of Minecraft’s development (www.minecraft.net) angielski
Tune in tomorrow for a PlayStation 5 Technical Presentation hosted by Mark Cerny (blog.playstation.com) angielski
Rumors have it this event will announce the PS5 Pro. I know the PS5 has been out for years now but does anyone feel like a pro version might be unnecessary? Current gen games already look great and run fine*...
Oxenfree is being completely removed from itch.io in October (www.gamingonlinux.com) angielski
Luckily it’s DRM-free. Back up your installers. I wanted to call attention to this, because in a very unusual move, it’s being removed even for people who own a copy, whereas usually stores will only remove a game from sale and still host the files for existing owners to download.