Huh, it’s almost like when you make the same game 12 times, force shitty DRM, and then outright disable access to content, people are not going to support your business.
I’m sure I could boot up the 360 version of Skyrim and see some great classic Bethesda bugs.
I agree that Starfield was the least buggy release in ages. I had also heard that at some point they were being directed to adapt the idTech engine which runs DOOM to become the new base for Bethesda games, but I guess that hasn’t happened.
To whit I played a few dozen hours of Starfield and generally by that point with any other Bethesda game, I’d have found some stupid bug that causes me to get annoyed and quit, but I just got bored of the game because of the repetitive nature and the confinement to fast travel for everything.
Yeah but Bethesda has the reputation of leaving it up to the modders, even long-term. Look at the 20 releases of Skyrim; some of them have the same bugs that they did on launch, classic Bethesda weirdness resulting from using the same busted-ass engine for 5 generations of games. Those bugs have only been addressed and mitigated by the modding community, despite there being a re-release and remaster on every single console for the last three generations.
It’s not that Bethesda can’t given the opportunity, but they tend to only do so when they are unable to rely on modders, like FO76.
Destiny’s onboarding for new players is literally the worst. If you don’t have a veteran guiding you into the game it’s literally impossible to pick up. You want more interest in the game, then make it easier to actually pick it up instead of flat replacing the starter content.
Yeah but it’s Paradox as the publisher who is the one setting the parameters of them having to build a game that is designed to support 10 years of DLC like all of their other products because that’s their monetization strategy.
You can refund games for being buggy, you cannot however, play them for dozens of hours and then refund them. Steam’s limit is two hours and two weeks.
I don’t think Sony is going to give up that easily, nor is Nintendo or Valve.
Microsoft has tried, with sheer force of capital to buy out these players and couldn’t understand when they were denied. In tech you can do big mergers and acquisitions with sheer capital but Nintendo is a pride and joy crown jewel of Japanese industry, and no amount of money would allow MS to buy them.
MS’ big push for accessibility and cloud gaming makes them ultimately platform agnostic over time, because they are leveraging the cloud technology to deploy their catalogue on any machine with an internet connection and a screen.
“Classic” Microsoft, the EEE (envelop, extend, extinguish) strategy that made them assholes through the 90s and early aughts hasn’t been nearly as prevalent in the current Nadella era. More often than not MS has been forking open source projects or simply contributing to them in their own ways rather than building proprietary systems.
It’s funny that I lead with this because I had a minute to think about it and honestly I kind of just don’t care. Dragonflight did not renew my hopes for retail, although it had some neat mechanic changes. Classic will be over for me probably by the end of January, unless they announce basically Classic+ based around the WOTLK talents. I am going to get my Shadowmourne, kill Arthas on heroic, and then go play FFXIV.
No, I think they’re going to continue adding massive value to the Gamepass system to keep it afloat and competitive. Maybe a WoW sub is a bit of a stretch, but basically all other games will thrive on the platform. StarCraft 2 is still the benchmark RTS for competitive play. Overwatch and Diablo are not my cups of tea but they would also make great offerings on the platform. Most of Blizzard’s core franchises outside of WoW itself are heavily MTX’d out the ass, battle passes, cosmetics, whatever - even if it’s included in the gamepass sub, the theoretical higher volume of players will likely compensate for unit sales through the aforementioned MTX.