“Hi, welcome to the midgame checkpoint. To continue, please produce 25 potions that require four different useless items.”
“Oh ho, this enemy is impervious to your broadsword. But if you have that one dagger the orphan boy dropped 26 playing hours ago, then you can throw it in his eye and obtain the Orphan’s Treasure. This unique item will grant a buff that increases gainaxing.”
“Yes, you’re low on health, but you can eat 25 cheese wheels. Save those hundred full life potions for when you really need th-Oh that was the last boss. Good job, you win, and the potions mean nothing.”
Ok, that last one is a reason not to hoard, but it stems from a thousand boss battles where you didn’t have any healing items.
Per the article, Microsoft is paying them not to sell any of the physical games and take them off the shelves. I’ll bet dollars to donuts that they end up buried in a landfill next to ET.
Sounds like the price reduction will be only in Walmart accounting system, so they can justify throwing them all away and write off the lost sales. I doubt they will actually sell all of those games.
When McDonald’s started asking “would you like fries with that?” their sales and profits exploded. That really happened.
Now let’s get theoretical. Imagine you were a potato farmer, and your friend was a cattle farmer. You both have an interest in selling as much of your product for the highest price possible.
You might try to promote potatoes, because that’s good for you. “French fries are going to become the main course, and burgers are going to become obsolete.” Well, no, that’s not supported by the data. That doesn’t mean that fries aren’t good for McDonald’s. Sales for both went up. People buying french fries didn’t buy fewer burgers. The effect was additive, not canibalistic.
Of course, does that mean that either is “good” for the industry? Does that mean it’s “good” for consumers? Is it fearmongering to point out the health risks of eating fried potatoes and ground beef every day, or how bad factory feeding people is for the economy?
Subscription gaming isn’t going to replace traditional games. But it has become a significant part of the industry. If that’s good or bad depends on your perspective.
There are also hundreds of other theories that can potentially explain it. Like, 100 years really isn’t a long time on cosmic scales. Maybe we’re late to the party and intelligent life wiped itself out already. Maybe we’re early, and we will wipe ourselves out before a new intelligence even figures out where the copy paper is.
I want to be absolutely clear that I don’t condone doxxing or harassment, and people should be free to push boundaries in artistic endeavors.
But you only get to Bowser in 8-4 if you make several specific choices in the game, and it seems like the main draw of the game is being edgy with sexy cartoons. If it didn’t want to be “the incest game” then it shouldn’t really have incest in it. That’s a controversial choice, and if the developer didn’t know that, they didn’t read or watch Game of Thrones.
Does anyone else remember bringing home free trials on floppy disks? Like you get the first level of Wolfenstein or Commander Keen and you just play that over and over because you don’t have any money.
Except weren’t they still promoting those features at launch? And they had taken preorders before review embargoes were lifted.
Both No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk both had dishonest marketing and significant bugs. Call me crazy, but if a game isn’t ready to launch, it shouldn’t launch. The developer sets the launch date, and if they didn’t give themselves enough time, it’s not reasonable to ask the people who have paid for he thing as advertised to wait because they couldn’t deliver the features as promised.
Yeah, I bought it during beta testing and my account was attached to an old email. Gave up trying to migrate years ago. I’m actually surprised they still haven’t deleted it already.