BrilliantBill

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Ubisoft offers Day One releases of its titles on Ubi+, so they have already kind of taken the plunge. The rest not yet
@NEStalgia Very valid arguments, specially about the media frenzy, Sony has certainly nailed this by releasing a string of games that are broadly mostly overrated and simply lifted up by sheer generated hype. Plus, releasing games like this injects more "prestige" into the game, which is a big part of Sony's schtick (calling remasters on PS5 something like "Director's Cut" because the term comes from prestige Cinema and film-lover community and sounds more elegant than "Enhanced").
But in terms of publishers locking you into one game and one game only, Supposing that I am locked into CoD, and a new one releases per year, am I then not locked into paying a whole year of subscription and its price? There are millions of players who play almost exclusively just CoD and Fifa. Many of the most-played games out there are also F2P anyway so releasing them on GP vs not on GP is not even a discussion (Fortnite etc).

@NEStalgia But isn't it like, fundamentally a wrong comparison?
With a single product, you have a chance that User A spend 80 bucks on CoD once a year, vs a scenario where User A spends 15 bucks a month, totalling 180 euros a year, to play CoD and many other games (a large part of which are small indie titles with small budget who no one would even bother to play if they weren't part of GP) plus now you have user B and user C etc dipping in because it is not 80 euros outright, rather 15 per month. It is the same logic that a car maker has for letting you finance or lease the car, instead of asking you to pay up 40K outright.

We live in a world where Netflix and Disney+ regularly drop projects with 200 Million dollar budgets on streaming, no reason a AAA video game cannot do that. All arguments from Kotick,Ryan etc still sounds BS to me.
Plus, CoD will still sell its bajillion dollars on PS, Nintendo and many PC users who don't use/have access to GP.

This soap opera is as tiring to me as the next guy, but some of the insights spilling out of it are really interesting.

@dimi Besides the obvious thing, which is Bungie helping Sony with their 11 or so live-service games (an area where Sony has absolute zero experience) Bungie has a knack for making games where fans of the game somehow never see the flaws of the game, their original bunch of Halo games had fair share of issues in each game that very few have brought up. Similarly, Destiny is one of the most confusing, poorly made and held-together-with-duct-tape online experiences out there yet somehow financially it is doing superb and there are players who have turned it into their second job.
They can also eventually get a CoD-competitor out of them (though I think that Infinity Wards and Treyarch are leagues ahead of Bungie in their tech and gameplay design now) but CoD and Bungie's games are both meant to remain multi-plat.

I mean, I am not exactly a big fan of Fantasy genre and therefore I may well be wrong, but isn't fantasy almost always the same humans, elves, orcs, dragons stuff? The game is also codenamed project Dragon, so there are dragons for sure I guess?
I think between this fantasy game and James Bond, JB is the more obvious fit for them. Most hitman games are about a guy wearing a suite mingling among crowds of rich/influencial government officials/oil and drug lords etc. in exotic expensive locations, so JB fits right in for them. a fantasy RPG is as far away from their expertise as they can get.
I also think that probably the whole RPG genre is going through a boom right now and so many big studios are going to jump in, but as we have seen with all other trends, many will not survive long enough.

Kind of a shame Crytek is not mentioned either. They have a powerful game engine, and two very potent IPs in Ryse and Crysis. Microsoft could have made some decent games out of them. I kinda prefer IO to stay a multi-platform entity.
@NEStalgia Since all of Bungie's games seem to remain multi-platform, I believe the sole reason Sony picked them up is to give them a hand in their charge towards live-service gaming as Bungie has certainly done well with Destiny (despite the tons of issues that the game also has).

@Kaloudz Yeah Advanced Warfare was the peak of that as they were copying Titanfall super hard and Black Ops 3 and I guess even 4 had that too? That was probably CoD's darkest time. The MW2019 kinda put everything back together in the right place.

@Banjo- I mean, considering that the last outing of Crystal Dynamics was a game based on Avengers which financially failed (as impossible as that sounds) and then two Tomb Raider games where (despite being very solid games ) the whole plot can be summed up into a billionaire girl having daddy issues, I don't really see the appeal/necessity of acquiring this studio.

@NEStalgia "Your honour our business is performing so poorly I can barely afford a second hand suit while the representatives from our competitor are wearing Saville row suits and Omega watches".

@VoidPunk Probably once again there is some technical/engine reasons why Warzone 2.0 was a separate thing and then they didn't want to immediately force everyone out of Warzone 1.
But the cynical person in me believes it is all just so that they can resell the same operators/skins/cosmetics again.

@Kaloudz CoD has probably been one of my all time favourite games. I think in recent years it has clearly lost its way a bit in general after MW1-2-3 of the old days. Infinite Warfare was great but very hated for no reason. Advanced Warfare is probably the worst and lamest CoD I ever played. The other game from Sledgehammer (WWII) was better than AW but still one of the much weaker CoDs. The other game from Sledgehammer (Vanguard) is similarly meh. I don't dig the 80s and Cold War era aesthetic so I didn't dig into Black Ops games other than the very first one (which was very solid). I think generally the franchise is all over the place in terms of quality and consistency specially because Sledgehammer games is a very mediocre studio and it kind of ruins the flow of CoD. MW2019 was really solid game and I happily recommend its campaign and MP (I didn't play that much of MP though). MW2022 has some flaws in campaign as it is often recycling great elements from previous games or trying to hard to be innovative and authentic (at times it feels like you are playing Splinter Cell or Ghost Recon as the whole political plot line is very "Nobody should know we are here"). But the MP of MW2022 is solid across the board. Be it Warzone, Resurgence (which is BR but you stay in as long as one of you survives) and specially DMZ. The seasonal content is also better than what I have seen elsewhere.

@Kaloudz If I remember correctly, Warzone was initially part of MW2019 from a development and tech perspective, but then CoD Vanguard and Black Ops Cold War were also adding content to it and Treyarch uses their own game engine (While Inifinity Ward and Sledgehammer both use IW9 engine). When Warzone 2.0 launched they renamed WZ into WZ Caldera. But now Warzone 2.0 is often just called Warzone. Meanwhile, all future CoD games are supposed to use IW engine so that things are more seamless.

The best part of WZ2 is honestly its Extraction mode DMZ. I have been having a blast with it for a couple months now.

Bro didn't even bother to pay for a new suit and shirt. He grabbed that one he last wore in 2011 and called it a day .

@Kaloudz Next thing you know Xbox admits that their dad wasn't there for them when growing up and their mom was a drug addict. Meanwhile Sony admits their last big exclusive was Killzone 2 which can in no way compete with CoD.

Basically there is the original 1-2-3 "Solid" games, two "Metal Gear" games which are all also in Vol.1. After that you have MGS4, Peace Walker (originally a PSP game) and MGS V (5) which is made of two parts, The Phantom Pain and the prologue to it called Ground Zeroes. There are some non-canon games I don't know much about and probably are irrelevant.

However, 5 is available on PS4/X1 and by extension on current consoles. Meanwhile, MGS4 has been stuck on PS3 since 2008 and has no other version whatsoever, it is difficult and unstable on emulators. So it needs a port to modern consoles more than any other MGS. It is also stupidly good-looking and graphically awesome for a game from 2008!

@Kaloudz community believes that yes they are. It is also makes sense. But let's hope it's not like the "Halo Infinite DLC" something that was never properly leaked/rumored and was simply a case of the fanbase trying to "manifest" it by repeatedly mentioning it.
I am personally super eager to play MGS4 again, it is arguably one of the games that started my whole obsession with gaming.

@Kaloudz Problem that Xbox has compared to Netflix, TV Shows often take like a year or maximum two to make a season, a movie often around 2 years. So with some parallelisation you can have a ton of content coming every month. Meanwhile a decent AAA game takes 3 years min and 10 years max 😂, often landing around 5 years. So one bad game/ one bad planning and you are screwed.

@themightyant Probably because back in the earlier days they just dumped a ton of games into it from their back catalogue like "Here you go with 5 gears games and 7 Halo games etc". But now every game has to be made and it takes time.
@HarmanSmith Yep, but with Avatar, Star Wars and a decent-looking AC game such as mirage, they seem to be having a good time coming as well.
@Stocksy I wonder if they will ever publish those subscriber numbers.

@Kaloudz Considering the fact that Ubisoft charged 18 euros for Ubi+ (a service made of 15 AC and 10 FarCry games, all of which are basically reskins of the same game). The pricing is still bearable. But they better keep the hits coming. Otherwise it isn't a very good price for an "indie game dump" sort of subscription.

-More from Hellblade 2, a little more from Avowed if possible.
-Out of the shown stuff my main interest is with Clockwork Revolution right now.
-Any sort of announcement/news from Gears would be great .
-Some form of plan or "letter of intent" for future of Halo?

@Friendly Honestly, the game is still missing its Firefight mode (which could be made by this AI thing technically).

Has Forge ever had AI like this before?

I guess this probably means a semi open-world and side-quests are there?
I can usually play a game for around 30hrs easy. After that the game better give me a solid reason why it is still going. I think the AC games recently have this problem, after 30ish hours I am like "Bro just wrap it up!".

@Belkan A large part of Master Chief's impact is actually from his Halo 4 and afterwards performance. A wise-cracking one-liner military guy with a stoic personality (as was MC in Halo 1-3) is literally the most common trope in video game characters.

The way he formulates it they don't have a plan to push it on any studio unless the studio itself makes a solid pitch.
However whatever studio that does it is jumping naked into hot burning oil. Making a Halo game that grabs new audiences from the CoD and Fortnite etc, satisfies the 343-fans (the ones who appreciated the plot of 4, Infinite, and to some degree 5) and also the Bungie-fans (the Halo 1-3 cultists who believe a Halo game is only good if it is exactly like one of the Bungie games and without anything remotely modern with the same 20 year old gameplay) is almost suicide. The one studio purpose-built to do this is 343 and they have been stumbling around it a fair bit. 4 and Infinite are among my all time favourite games and Bungie's peak with the franchise is also hard to beat. I think id, IW and Treyarch are all theoretically capable of making a great one, how it plays out in practice is another debate.

@Kaloudz haha, I was actually going to say I would love to see Infinity Ward have a go at it. I guess everyone has their own favourite CoD dev. But definitely people from id have the talent and the tech and it would be glorious to see them go at it.

Doom or whatever id is cooking and Gears are safe and probably some very impressive games will be revealed some day this year or the next. The worrying item here is Halo, is it alive? it is alright?

@Kaloudz Kaloudz is secretly just Phil Spencer doing on-the-ground research on Xbox fandom. He knows all the workings behind the scenes.

I still remember the good old days games ran at 640p upscaled into a blurry brown 720p by the game and then a further crap upscale by console to 1080p, all of this running in a solid 25fps which could dip down to 19fps at any given time. The narrative that anything below 60 is bad was injected into console gamers by PC community (which regularly throws a whole month's salary at a GPU alone) and now we have to run this same discussion every two weeks about why 30fps is ok!

I am a bit conflicted about this game. Graphics looked stunning and Pandora is still a very cool place to explore. But this game is literally just a Far Cry game in Pandora and I have never enjoyed FC games that much.

Bruh, just let this thing clear. After the bombastic showcase a couple days ago, if the deal also goes through the Xbox camp can take a break.

For me it was a C, sometimes moving towards a D. The stage and presentation looked like it was an indie publisher. Meanwhile, the Avatar game grabbed my interest more than I expected. Despite the fact that it is probably just Far Cry: Pandora.
The SW game had a great showing and looks good to pickup on one of those sub-20-euro sales Ubi does after 1.5-2 years. Specially given how burnt-out I am on SW.

About time we see the most powerful console do some powerful things. The wait hasn't been easy. But Fable and Hellblade 2 so far are really bringing the heat.

I mean, it is very easily doable to have 4 first-party releases per year. It depends on how you count it. If their purchase of ABK goes through there is 1 per year with CoD. If Indies and AA bring 1 game and then their XGS brings 2 games a year it is set.
I am out here hoping that a part of this is achieved by giving some room to Halo and Gears to also have more releases and not be "once a decade" franchises.

@OrfeasDourvas The first showing was a complete CGI. The spell casting with hands in that cgi is in the game. But ofc graphically it wasn't representative.
@somnambulance Thisss! Outer Worlds also looked very mid in trailers but in action its good writing and world-building carried it well.

@somnambulance I mean, it all depends on the gameplay and story etc as well. Only one out of 3 Bioshock games actually had this aesthetic (Infinite). So IMO it is really not comparable to the Foamstars or any other number of games that are just clones of Nintendo's big games (there was an Animal Crossing clone is SGF too).
@SplooshDmg Which is also worrying, I can already see the "InXile had never made a game like this and actually devs didn't even want to make it" article as has become the norm these days 😂😂😂.

@Kaloudz Gamescom is a thing, there is also the Game Awards in December (where they announced the Series X itself) so there is some hope for our favourite games to show their heads in 2023. Otherwise I guess yes 2024 or even 2025 for them. But around 2025 the consoles are already 5 years old and games and developers should really hit them hard and squeeze every last drop out of the hardware.

@Kaloudz I was kinda reminded of you when State of Decay didn't show up. And wept a little for myself when there was no Gears
Look how they massacred our boys!
Meanwhile another redundant update for the SoT,FS,ESO,Fallout 76 😂

@Cashews They said only for Xbox first party. This is Ubisoft.
@PushButtons Even before that, I am honestly checked out of Star Wars, every SW film, series, video game is just some other media with a SW skin. SW is probably the most creatively bankrupt IP.

@Banjo- I have feeling this is not an early-2024 game either. This is probably their September and later game in 2024 and will have a big "Direct" showcase some day.

@SplooshDmg But aren't InXile into RPG games? Isn't this game RPG? I went with the idea that it is an RPG. The rest of it all looks very Bioshock Infinite, but again it is not that Bioshock has a patent on Steampunk aesthetic, others can do it too.

@Gr81 Graphically it looked on par with The Outer Worlds, I don't know if it is their technical graphics, or art design or both. Their games seem to have this "from 6-7 year ago" look to their graphics. But again, not every game is going to be a looker!

I think others would agree with me that it is about time the broadly boring updates for the "failed Live-service gang" like ESO,SoT etc is pulled out of these showcases. The rest of the showcase was a solid A for me, downgraded to B via these failed live-service elements + some odd choices elsewhere (Fable was in-engine but still in no shape tells us anything about the game) or Hellblade 2 (yes we know Senua hears voices and the face animation is on point, what else?).
On the positive side, the games from Obsidian and InXile looked very good (InXile game has strong Bioshock Infinite vibes), Starfield itself is a beast in almost every way! FM again didn't get my blood pumping but you can hardly expect much from a racing-sim.
Still the showcase was a whole level above the SGF and Sony Showcase.

@Krzzystuff Well yes but actually no. They did this in 2020 when they announced a dozen games back to back with CGI trailers and then most of those still haven't shown gameplay yet. I think the right tempo is 2-4 big AAA games that they show for future release at any given time.

Yeah, this game isn't making it this year I guess. Also, it is already getting super crowded with SpiderMan 2, Alan Wake 2, and many others aiming for the Holiday season.

@pip_muzz Basically half the problem is forcing these crap rap music on every videogame/tv show trailer and the other half is that even someone remotely familiar with Persian/middle-eastern aesthetic knows there is nothing Persian in the aesthetic, art design, and vibes of the game. The base side-scrolling game is fine though.

@InterceptorAlpha Sam Lake said it is a 50/50 situation. but then he said you choose to the whole thing with one of them!? It was confusing.

@Solidchief Sam Lake said you can switch between the two or just go ahead with one of them but he somehow made it more confusing.
@MustachioFurioso It's not like RE has a patent on third-person over the shoulder view or horror genre. I honestly didn't see a RE Clone vibe.

Generally underwhelming IMO. Some of the parts were just odd DLC from the Sony showcase like AW2 looked great but it had like 30 seconds new footage after the previous trailer or the Spiderman 2 just revealing the release date. Overall not good but could have easily been worse. Probably they are keeping some stuff for Gamescom and TGA as well and not revealing all the cards.

@InterceptorAlpha Been playing the DMZ (aka extraction shooter ) part of Warzone fairly consistently over the past month, the Resurgence mode is also good fun. The game has great gunplay, great environments and decent-enough missions to do. I am excited for the new Season.

@NEStalgia They have just realised there is no way they can win this game of "living up to everyone's expectations".

Greenberg: People can have expectations
Fan Expectations : 24 console exclusives in the next 24 month with 48 more on the way. All AAA comparable to God of War Ragnarok and CoD MW2 in terms of success and popularity.