Don't why they keep bothering with Halo Infinite at this point. It has less players than Battlefield 2042 on Steam. And it struggles against MCC.
It is purely being played by the same core audience who played Halo 4 and 5.
I would say that with the new staff to just cut your loses and create the next game, or even reboot the series at this point, but sunk cost fallacy, I guess.
@Would_you_kindly It would be a start, but I don't see them making an exception just for MCC. Plenty of other paid for online titles also had micros and still required XBLG.
@BartoxTharglod MS doesn't tell us how many Gold members there are anymore, so I can only assume that the number is pretty dire, or completely irrelevant to the Xbox platform.
There's 25m GP subs (which is far more than the >15m Xbox series consoles out there).
And there were apparently 100m active xbox online users in 2020 (massively up from 40m in 2016, and far more than the combined xbox one and series install base at around 65m). The service has grown far beyond the Gold members, and in reality that is what MS wants. A massive online userbase.
So I mean, at best, you have up to 40m users who just pay for Xbox Gold. And 60m who play F2P, on PC, or through Game Pass. Though the actual number could be much smaller. We're maybe talking at a loss of 2.5bn a year, which is nothing for MS itself.
Losing 2.5bn a year is bad business in the short term, but to standardise its online systems across all platforms, have the consumer friendly points over Sony and Nintendo (who arguably, need that money far more), and to make Xbox Network the best option for online play across multiple devices, seems like smart business long term.
Between PC and mobile streaming, XBox Live Gold is on its last legs. The service can only hold out for so long. Ripping off that band aid quickly will help improve the Xbox image faster, and early in this gen cycle. The best time to do it, well, it was two years ago, but the second best time is right now.
Party chat, cloud saves, and F2P games are all free on xbox. Which makes Xbox Live Gold just an online tax to people who play paid online games. Like Wonderlands, It takes Two, and even MCC.
@Arcnail Yeah, people do 100% understand what NFTs are, and that's why they hate them. You are just dismissing people hating them to rationalise away their hate in your favour, rather than accept they hate them because they understand.
"Do you have any collectables? Baseball cards or maybe action figures or something? That's simply what these are, in digital, and tradable format on a block chain"
Collectables, like baseball cards have value because they have real scarcity. They are physical objects that could only be made in so many quantities, and over time, that quantity can only decrease. What you are talking about is a digital, and thus endlessly, freely replicable, item and does not have that same scarcity.
Even worse, baseball cards aren't tied to crypto. Their value is within their own existence. The entire value of the dollar could collapse, but that card remains. You could trade it with anything. NFTs are tied to currencies that aren't backed by anything. If the blockchain or cryptos fall, so does those NFTs. You could lose everything in an instant, and people have been, and the performance of crypto for 2022 shouldn't make you more confident in the currencies.
@Nightcrawler71 Rockstar North has over 600 people working there, and the remasters would very likely be done by another studio, like Grove Street Games.
I mean, you could get multiple studios involved and more than 600 people, but that's how Halo Infinite happened. More cooks will not make a better soup.
Imagine if they just built a new studio around these guys and had them create the next Fallout entry while Bethesda themselves finished Starfield and started Elder Scrolls 6?
Leave the main entries for Bethesda but let new, passionate devs do the spin offs, so we don't have to wait 10 years to get a new game.
The London team already have a great basis, and I would pay to see it fleshed out in to a full game.
Xbox = Exclusives & multiplatform games.
PS = Exclusives & games I want to replay.
Nintendo = Exclusives & games that benefit from the unique features.
This is the best way that I've found to approach it, and it's been this way since the PSWii60 days.
Even Elon Musk, Prince Scam himself, has criticised the technical foundation this is seemingly based on.
The company, Polium, doesn't have much of a footprint. Can't find much info on them. And what I can find seems to hint at them being 1-10 person strong. And they want to produce a console that has features that multibillion dollar companies are struggle with?
@JetmanUK I feel about EA the same as I feel about all companies. Don't care about the tweet one bit. Why do you care so much about what I think though? Why are you invested in me hating EA for a tweet?.
An analogy is an analogy. The comparison wasn't calling EA racist, it was saying that a thing that use to unironically engage in a thing, now doing it "ironically" or for a joke. I could have use anything. And I 100% stand by it. Not walking away at all.
My biggest investment here is you being angry at people that were angry at EA for doing a meme joke, while you got angry at me for my initial meme joke. It's top quality hypocrisy.
@JetmanUK Telling me I'm not thinking straight and you don't even know what an analogy is.
All I've been doing is trying to explain why people reacted to this the way they did. And you've placed an emotional investment on to me that isn't there. Think all that triggered talk is a bit of projection on your part.
Both the gaming community and industry is to blame for this.
They spent years building up the hype marketing and console wars, to the point where releasing games wasn't just this collective event for the community, but a status symbol for the fanboys. There's also just the general push of FOMO for new content. Fans have been conditioned to feel a massive rush of excitement for releases, and massive wave of anxiety for delays. I think that anxiety manifests as anger towards developers.
Sony's entire business model is hinged on this. They wont put new games on their sub service because of the money that new releases generate. The PS fanbase is fully primed to drop £70 for every release to get that fix. Of course there's those that are feeling that anxiety now that their releases are slipping.
Odd that they continue to force in these out of place cosmetics in to Halo 3 (the game that's "outdated because it doesn't have sprint") and not in to a game that could do with more cosmetics (Halo 2A) a game they created themselves (Halo 2A or Halo 4) or in to a game that has sprint and is therefore "modern and better" (Halo 4 or Halo Reach).
I mean, Halo 3 is getting cross over promotional content and Halo Infinite hasn't. Very odd.
Anyway. I look forward to the Halo 3 2027 remake that is the "return to roots for the series".
This is what happens when you have a market that has a finite audience with a finite amount of time to dedicate to a title, and every title wants every second of those finite resources.
It's funny that this decision seems to have come after they said they'd mostly moved over to focus on Halo Infinite, after HI released, and after HI tanked.
It's almost as if they said "we aren't making the MTX money we were expecting, where can we cover some of those costs?" and decided to shoehorn them in MCC, 8 years after the game launched.
Let's be honest here, all the big content releases for MCC have happened, and for free. These MTXs will either go straight to an executive's pocket, or on the addition of more useless cosmetics.
You've seen how cosmetics affects actual content with Halo Infinite. The cosmetics become the priority because that's the content that makes money. Between HI and MCC and over 8 years, they've released less maps than Halo 3 saw in the first 6 months. There's zero chance this new "optional, additional alternative" goes towards funding anything exciting.
This is the result of live service games. It's what happened to Epic Games, it's what some MS studios have been built for, and it's what's going to happen to any of the Sony studios that hit it big with any of their live service games.
@antstephenson @themightyant I was one of the guys that loved the trash talking. I full on flourished in that environment. I did pick up many bad additions to my vocab, which I've had to drop since. I did try to be good about it though, and aim that aggressiveness towards the toxic players. Would also stand up for kids and women that were getting unfair abuse. It was much more fun to trash talk someone that asked for it.
I do miss it because it gave personality to the pixels I was shooting. Nowadays, you can be shooting a bot and not even tell the difference. I wouldn't even mind if everybody were friendly and good sports, I just miss that interactivity of the players.
But I totally understand why a lot of people didn't enjoy that.
@Baler Pushsquare had an article on Sony announcing that between 40-50% of their audience were female. The amount of people who full on denied it was the case, or the validity of these female gamers' status as gamers, was just crazy. Why deny something like that?. Women make up half the population, why wouldn't they be half of gamers too?, and Sony have the data to make that claim, the gamers don't. Why did that upset so many males?
Yes, gaming is still an "intimidating arena". If you are part of a group of people, and you have a larger group gatekeeping that activity, telling you that it's "not for you, not really", or "you aren't a real fan", it's going to be intimidating and offputting. Sexism and bigotry was not only rampant during the 360 days, but continues to exist today. A lot of white straight guys (like myself) don't see it very often, if at all, because we aren't the targets. But if you keep your eyes open, and listen to the people who are targets, you'll actually start to notice it a lot more often.
There's nothing wrong or sinister with gaming acknowledging it has a diverse (in both identity and preference) audience. And that audience feeling more included in to the space as that happens.
For all talks of 'monopolies', this is why I was in complete favour of MS buying Acti. As an independant publisher, they are terrible, and do not deserve the franchises they hold.
I'm actually not suprised. I think a lot of the bigots/manchilds moved platforms last gen. Look at the responses to Aloy and Abby, then look at the responses to Tell Us Why.
That said, I hope some dude-bro content remains, it just doesn't need to be the only content.
If Bethesda had given Obsidian enough time and resources (or anywhere close to what Bethy would have had themselves with Fallout 3), then New Vegas would have easily been the best game so far.
As is, I still have to give Fallout 3 the win.
(Would love to revisit both with a remaster, hint hint)
I'm currently going back to Fallout 4 to get the 100% on it before I fully move on.
@somnambulance Elder Scrolls is more than just Skyrim.
And we know the new content is coming, and it's going to take years, a 3rd party studio can remaster a game in a fraction of the time and cost.
Besides Fallout and Elder Scrolls 1 and 2 not having xbox releases, there's still plenty of small QoL features and upgrades that could be done to Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas.
Like, imagine having wide screen support on Morrowind.
Acti had 3 main companies and another 3 or so in support, just to get COD out every year. Building more studios to make sure you can get an alternation of Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield, evey couple of years (or at least one of each franchise every five years) sounds like a decent strategy to me.
Given how well these titles do, I'd say there's definitely enough demand for it.
I love first person games, it's a great perspective when you want the audience to embody the character. Mostly action and silent protagonists.
Third person though, is better when you have a protag that you want the audience to connect to, and feel for. I feel like horror games benefit greatly from it.
@uptownsoul People don't buy PS+ for the free games, they do it for the online.
Not all games from Sony end up on PS+. The Last Guardian is 5+ years old and, at least to my knowledge, has never been given away. Between not being guaranteed, and inconsistency in releases, relying on PS+ for your games is not viable.
And PS Now only had like 3 million subs. So I mean, if you want PS Extra to have 3 millions, or if we dream big, 5 million, then OK. Great success.
Again, these aren't the same. You keep comparing apples to oranges and expecting the same results.
@uptownsoul You're still conflating Cinema releases and physical releases, aren't you?
Cinema release = no equivalent Blu-ray/dvd physical release = standard game launch Disney+ = Game Pass/PS+
Cinema launches aren't the same as blu-ray/dvd physical releases, nor the same as streaming releases. Someone who goes to watch at the cinema can still get value out of Disney+ because they no longer have access to the content when it hits the streaming service. Anyone buying physical has no need for streaming and streamers have no need for physical, because having one gives you the same, at home, experience, that you can rewatch. That's why physical sales declined when streaming became a thing.
Trying to compare the at home experience of a video game to the cinema experience, rather than the at home blu-ray is flawed.
I also want to reiterate the difference between Game Pass and PS+.
Game Pass is an alternative. If you buy GP, you don't have to buy Halo, or Gears, or Forza, because you get them at the same time as everybody else. That's $180per year as you say.
PS+ is a supplement service. If you buy PS Extra, you either have to wait like a second class citizen or you buy the game at launch. Which makes that $100 + $70 for every title you don't want to wait for. The only way to make PS extra better value in this case, is to wait for everything and buy no more than 1 PS 1st party title a year.
But you can Sony are expecting everybody to not just pay for the service, but then also maintain the $70 per title, which devalues your sub service.
So, while GP is viable as both a 3rd and 1st party service, PS+ is only good as a 3rd party service.
Your best move, would be to get GP, get all MS and 3rd party games on Xbox and PC, and pay for 1st party titles separately.
Apart from those who like to throw money at Sony, or those that won't purchase the titles, PS+ is a pointless service.
@uptownsoul 3rd party doesn't count. The reason 3rd parties are meant to do well on sub services is because they reach an audience that they otherwise wouldn't have. Marvel is not a 3rd party indie studio. The point is Sony has a massive audience and it want to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to launch day and sub sales.
I fear you are missing the clear point. Physical movie sales have declined because of streaming services. Sony thinks their launch sales won't decline despite a guarantee they will be on a sub service.
The strat that Sony is copying is one of low physical sales. Yet you are arguing as if they will remain high.
I also want to make sure you aren't conflating Cinema releases and physical releases.
The only way that Sony can copy this strat and have both the launch sales and the sub service be highly valuable is if 1) Sony finds an entirely new untapped market to fill the gap, or 2) Sony buyers double dip.
CG trailers do nothing for me now. They clearly have nothing to show, and so are showing me nothing and wanting me to be excited for nothing but my own imagination. Nah.
There's only one other way to do a CG trailer, and that is to laugh along with me about you having nothing.
@uptownsoul Yes, but Game Pass has launch day releases.
Disney bring in most of their money through Cinema releases, not physical releases. Also, I don't remember Disney hanging the quality of their titles on their physical releases.
@uptownsoul OK, but physical movie sales have plummeted since streaming came about. And cinema releases have no equivalent in video games.
The current hold outs cite quality and continued access as reasons for physical purchase, but quality isn't an issue with downloads.
If Sony commit to having people buy at launch, they diminish the sub's value. Or they'll be wasting a lot of money marketing a game to people who are going to wait for the subscription release.
@uptownsoul If you go watch a Marvel movie in the cinema, you do not then have that movie to take home with you. And Disney plus has exclusive Marvel shows.
If I bought God of War Ragnorok at launch, I still have that when it hits the sub service.
If the plan is to sell new games to the core userbase, who is subscribing to this? I don't see the people who buy a handful of, or cheap games, to be convinced to pay more money for a collection of games currated by someone else.
I think it's more likely that either the core userbase pays twice (very likely given how brand loyal it is) or the core userbase stops buying at launch and does the "I'll wait for it to come to premium".
I totally understand the criticism here. Bigger doesn't always mean better. Devs are always trying to go bigger and not really thinking of the end experience. I think something like MAG is a great example of that. Massive MP game, but absolute chaos in practice. Is it really possible for us to explore an entire galaxy in a video game?. None of us really have the time for that.
However, this is a space exploration RPG, it needs to feel bigger than just 10 planets. I saw people commenting "NMS has X so Starfield better have X or this will be embarrassing", so you know that if Starfield didn't have 1000s of planets, they'd just be complaining that Starfield didn't have it, and felt small for a game in that genre.
So our choices are 'Small', 'Barren', or 'Too Big'. If we get 10 hand crafted colonies on 5-6 densely packed solar systems, with engaging stories across the inhabitants, and the rest is big and mostly empty (like how the actual universe is), I'll consider that a win.
Comments 1,237
Re: Halo & Bungie Veteran Joins 343 As Technical Design Director
Don't why they keep bothering with Halo Infinite at this point. It has less players than Battlefield 2042 on Steam. And it struggles against MCC.
It is purely being played by the same core audience who played Halo 4 and 5.
I would say that with the new staff to just cut your loses and create the next game, or even reboot the series at this point, but sunk cost fallacy, I guess.
Re: Deals: Xbox 'Back Compat Sale' Now Live, 100+ Games Included
@Banjo- Yeah. I don't know why.
Re: Deals: Xbox 'Back Compat Sale' Now Live, 100+ Games Included
@Banjo- Believe the HD Collection is just MGS 2 and 3.
I picked up PW because it's the only one I've been missing.
Re: Xbox Games With Gold Is Officially Ditching Xbox 360 Games
@Would_you_kindly It would be a start, but I don't see them making an exception just for MCC. Plenty of other paid for online titles also had micros and still required XBLG.
Re: Xbox's Next Competitor Could Be An 'NFT Games Console', Apparently
@Agent_P Source for what?, the lack of information on the company?, or the fact that baseball cards are physical items and NFTs are digital?
Re: Xbox Games With Gold Is Officially Ditching Xbox 360 Games
@BartoxTharglod MS doesn't tell us how many Gold members there are anymore, so I can only assume that the number is pretty dire, or completely irrelevant to the Xbox platform.
There's 25m GP subs (which is far more than the >15m Xbox series consoles out there).
And there were apparently 100m active xbox online users in 2020 (massively up from 40m in 2016, and far more than the combined xbox one and series install base at around 65m). The service has grown far beyond the Gold members, and in reality that is what MS wants. A massive online userbase.
So I mean, at best, you have up to 40m users who just pay for Xbox Gold. And 60m who play F2P, on PC, or through Game Pass. Though the actual number could be much smaller. We're maybe talking at a loss of 2.5bn a year, which is nothing for MS itself.
Losing 2.5bn a year is bad business in the short term, but to standardise its online systems across all platforms, have the consumer friendly points over Sony and Nintendo (who arguably, need that money far more), and to make Xbox Network the best option for online play across multiple devices, seems like smart business long term.
Between PC and mobile streaming, XBox Live Gold is on its last legs. The service can only hold out for so long. Ripping off that band aid quickly will help improve the Xbox image faster, and early in this gen cycle. The best time to do it, well, it was two years ago, but the second best time is right now.
Re: Xbox Games With Gold Is Officially Ditching Xbox 360 Games
The 360 games were the best part of the service.
Party chat, cloud saves, and F2P games are all free on xbox. Which makes Xbox Live Gold just an online tax to people who play paid online games. Like Wonderlands, It takes Two, and even MCC.
Kill it already.
Re: Xbox's Next Competitor Could Be An 'NFT Games Console', Apparently
@Arcnail Yeah, people do 100% understand what NFTs are, and that's why they hate them. You are just dismissing people hating them to rationalise away their hate in your favour, rather than accept they hate them because they understand.
"Do you have any collectables? Baseball cards or maybe action figures or something? That's simply what these are, in digital, and tradable format on a block chain"
Collectables, like baseball cards have value because they have real scarcity. They are physical objects that could only be made in so many quantities, and over time, that quantity can only decrease. What you are talking about is a digital, and thus endlessly, freely replicable, item and does not have that same scarcity.
Even worse, baseball cards aren't tied to crypto. Their value is within their own existence. The entire value of the dollar could collapse, but that card remains. You could trade it with anything. NFTs are tied to currencies that aren't backed by anything. If the blockchain or cryptos fall, so does those NFTs. You could lose everything in an instant, and people have been, and the performance of crypto for 2022 shouldn't make you more confident in the currencies.
Re: Rockstar Supposedly Cancelled GTA 4 & Red Dead Redemption Remasters
@Nightcrawler71 Rockstar North has over 600 people working there, and the remasters would very likely be done by another studio, like Grove Street Games.
I mean, you could get multiple studios involved and more than 600 people, but that's how Halo Infinite happened. More cooks will not make a better soup.
Re: Bethesda Hires 'Fallout: London' Modder As Associate Level Designer
Imagine if they just built a new studio around these guys and had them create the next Fallout entry while Bethesda themselves finished Starfield and started Elder Scrolls 6?
Leave the main entries for Bethesda but let new, passionate devs do the spin offs, so we don't have to wait 10 years to get a new game.
The London team already have a great basis, and I would pay to see it fleshed out in to a full game.
Re: Digital Foundry Host Says Xbox Series X Wins Most Console Comparisons
Xbox = Exclusives & multiplatform games.
PS = Exclusives & games I want to replay.
Nintendo = Exclusives & games that benefit from the unique features.
This is the best way that I've found to approach it, and it's been this way since the PSWii60 days.
Re: Xbox's Next Competitor Could Be An 'NFT Games Console', Apparently
This is a scam within a scam.
Even Elon Musk, Prince Scam himself, has criticised the technical foundation this is seemingly based on.
The company, Polium, doesn't have much of a footprint. Can't find much info on them. And what I can find seems to hint at them being 1-10 person strong. And they want to produce a console that has features that multibillion dollar companies are struggle with?
Re: God Of War's Cory Barlog Is 'So F***ing Excited' For Starfield
@Kaloudz It's a google search comparison;
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=god%20of%20war,starfield
It's interesting data, but it's more correlative of interest rather than direct interest.
Edit:
I mean;
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=GB&q=god%20of%20war,starfield,halo,skyrim
Halo and Skyrim dominate GoW and Starfield in these graphs, so what weight you want to give this is entirely up to the viewer
Re: EA Gets Slammed For Posting Meme About Single-Player Games
@JetmanUK I feel about EA the same as I feel about all companies. Don't care about the tweet one bit. Why do you care so much about what I think though? Why are you invested in me hating EA for a tweet?.
An analogy is an analogy. The comparison wasn't calling EA racist, it was saying that a thing that use to unironically engage in a thing, now doing it "ironically" or for a joke. I could have use anything. And I 100% stand by it. Not walking away at all.
My biggest investment here is you being angry at people that were angry at EA for doing a meme joke, while you got angry at me for my initial meme joke. It's top quality hypocrisy.
Re: EA Gets Slammed For Posting Meme About Single-Player Games
@JetmanUK Telling me I'm not thinking straight and you don't even know what an analogy is.
All I've been doing is trying to explain why people reacted to this the way they did. And you've placed an emotional investment on to me that isn't there. Think all that triggered talk is a bit of projection on your part.
Re: EA Gets Slammed For Posting Meme About Single-Player Games
@JetmanUK an ex-white supremacist telling unfunny racial jokes might be recieved as offensive too.
If the joke had been smart and funny, or if EA hadn't once tried to kill the single player game, this would have gone differently.
Context is key. And the context is very awkward.
Re: EA Gets Slammed For Posting Meme About Single-Player Games
@JetmanUK Wouldn't have made it funny either.
Re: Xbox Boss Praises God Of War Producer Following Dramatic 24 Hours
Both the gaming community and industry is to blame for this.
They spent years building up the hype marketing and console wars, to the point where releasing games wasn't just this collective event for the community, but a status symbol for the fanboys. There's also just the general push of FOMO for new content. Fans have been conditioned to feel a massive rush of excitement for releases, and massive wave of anxiety for delays. I think that anxiety manifests as anger towards developers.
Sony's entire business model is hinged on this. They wont put new games on their sub service because of the money that new releases generate. The PS fanbase is fully primed to drop £70 for every release to get that fix. Of course there's those that are feeling that anxiety now that their releases are slipping.
Re: EA Gets Slammed For Posting Meme About Single-Player Games
@JetmanUK
No-one:
EA: "Haha, Single Player games are bad"
Fans: "WTF?"
EA: "It's a meme joke"
Re: Halo Infinite Campaign Co-Op Will Have A Distance Limit Between Players
@Cherip-the-Ripper It's common in open world online games too. The Far Cry games have it.
The co-op games that don't have an out of bounds area, normally have smaller playable sections that keep players closer, like Borderlands.
Re: Halo Infinite 'Campaign Network Co-Op Preview' Goes Live July 11th
Once this feature is out (and a big discount), I'll finally jump in to the game.
Re: Fall Guys Meets Halo With New Master Chief Collection Backpack
Odd that they continue to force in these out of place cosmetics in to Halo 3 (the game that's "outdated because it doesn't have sprint") and not in to a game that could do with more cosmetics (Halo 2A) a game they created themselves (Halo 2A or Halo 4) or in to a game that has sprint and is therefore "modern and better" (Halo 4 or Halo Reach).
I mean, Halo 3 is getting cross over promotional content and Halo Infinite hasn't. Very odd.
Anyway. I look forward to the Halo 3 2027 remake that is the "return to roots for the series".
Re: Free-To-Play Battle Royale Spellbreak Shuts Down In 2023
This is what happens when you have a market that has a finite audience with a finite amount of time to dedicate to a title, and every title wants every second of those finite resources.
Think they are lucky to have lasted 3-5 years.
Re: FNAF: Security Breach Jumps From PlayStation To Xbox This Autumn
Won't support because of Cawthon.
Re: Halo: The Master Chief Collection Might Be Adding Microtransactions
It's funny that this decision seems to have come after they said they'd mostly moved over to focus on Halo Infinite, after HI released, and after HI tanked.
It's almost as if they said "we aren't making the MTX money we were expecting, where can we cover some of those costs?" and decided to shoehorn them in MCC, 8 years after the game launched.
Let's be honest here, all the big content releases for MCC have happened, and for free. These MTXs will either go straight to an executive's pocket, or on the addition of more useless cosmetics.
You've seen how cosmetics affects actual content with Halo Infinite. The cosmetics become the priority because that's the content that makes money. Between HI and MCC and over 8 years, they've released less maps than Halo 3 saw in the first 6 months. There's zero chance this new "optional, additional alternative" goes towards funding anything exciting.
Re: Battlefield 2042 Is DICE's Only Focus, 'No Time' For Other Projects Says GM
This is the result of live service games. It's what happened to Epic Games, it's what some MS studios have been built for, and it's what's going to happen to any of the Sony studios that hit it big with any of their live service games.
Re: Phil Spencer Reacts As Xbox Is Praised For Being More Inclusive Than In The 2000s
@antstephenson @themightyant I was one of the guys that loved the trash talking. I full on flourished in that environment. I did pick up many bad additions to my vocab, which I've had to drop since. I did try to be good about it though, and aim that aggressiveness towards the toxic players. Would also stand up for kids and women that were getting unfair abuse. It was much more fun to trash talk someone that asked for it.
I do miss it because it gave personality to the pixels I was shooting. Nowadays, you can be shooting a bot and not even tell the difference. I wouldn't even mind if everybody were friendly and good sports, I just miss that interactivity of the players.
But I totally understand why a lot of people didn't enjoy that.
@Baler Pushsquare had an article on Sony announcing that between 40-50% of their audience were female. The amount of people who full on denied it was the case, or the validity of these female gamers' status as gamers, was just crazy. Why deny something like that?. Women make up half the population, why wouldn't they be half of gamers too?, and Sony have the data to make that claim, the gamers don't. Why did that upset so many males?
Yes, gaming is still an "intimidating arena". If you are part of a group of people, and you have a larger group gatekeeping that activity, telling you that it's "not for you, not really", or "you aren't a real fan", it's going to be intimidating and offputting. Sexism and bigotry was not only rampant during the 360 days, but continues to exist today. A lot of white straight guys (like myself) don't see it very often, if at all, because we aren't the targets. But if you keep your eyes open, and listen to the people who are targets, you'll actually start to notice it a lot more often.
There's nothing wrong or sinister with gaming acknowledging it has a diverse (in both identity and preference) audience. And that audience feeling more included in to the space as that happens.
Re: Tony Hawk Had Plans For More Pro Skater Remasters, But They Got Scrapped
For all talks of 'monopolies', this is why I was in complete favour of MS buying Acti. As an independant publisher, they are terrible, and do not deserve the franchises they hold.
Re: Phil Spencer Reacts As Xbox Is Praised For Being More Inclusive Than In The 2000s
I'm actually not suprised. I think a lot of the bigots/manchilds moved platforms last gen. Look at the responses to Aloy and Abby, then look at the responses to Tell Us Why.
That said, I hope some dude-bro content remains, it just doesn't need to be the only content.
Re: Pick One: Which Of These Fallout Games Is Your Favourite?
If Bethesda had given Obsidian enough time and resources (or anywhere close to what Bethy would have had themselves with Fallout 3), then New Vegas would have easily been the best game so far.
As is, I still have to give Fallout 3 the win.
(Would love to revisit both with a remaster, hint hint)
I'm currently going back to Fallout 4 to get the 100% on it before I fully move on.
Re: Dragon's Dogma 2 Is Real, And It's Currently In Development
I'd put money on it coming out after Elder Scrolls 6.
This entire thing screams "we have only just now been greenlit".
Re: The Elder Scrolls 6 Confirmed To Be In Pre-Production Ahead Of Starfield Release
@somnambulance Elder Scrolls is more than just Skyrim.
And we know the new content is coming, and it's going to take years, a 3rd party studio can remaster a game in a fraction of the time and cost.
Besides Fallout and Elder Scrolls 1 and 2 not having xbox releases, there's still plenty of small QoL features and upgrades that could be done to Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, and New Vegas.
Like, imagine having wide screen support on Morrowind.
Re: The Elder Scrolls 6 Confirmed To Be In Pre-Production Ahead Of Starfield Release
Hope they give us Fallout and Elder Scrolls remasters to play while we wait.
Re: Bethesda Confirms You Can't Manually Land On Planets In Starfield
Considering this is a space themed RPG and not a space simulator, I'm ok with that.
I'd hate to be killed off by what would be the space equivalent of me opening a load door too hard.
Re: Fallout 5 Will Come After Elder Scrolls 6, Confirms Todd Howard
Open a new studio. Hell, open two.
Acti had 3 main companies and another 3 or so in support, just to get COD out every year. Building more studios to make sure you can get an alternation of Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield, evey couple of years (or at least one of each franchise every five years) sounds like a decent strategy to me.
Given how well these titles do, I'd say there's definitely enough demand for it.
Re: Halo & Fall Guys Crossover Leaks Ahead Of Free-To-Play Xbox Launch
Now we can pretend we are Master Cheek's swimmers going for goal.
Re: Capcom Shows Off Resident Evil 4 Remake Gameplay
This looks great, but why isn't this just a brand new game?.
It could literally be a direct sequel to RE4. It could be Revelations 3.
I just get the feeling this will be RE4 in name only.
Re: Resident Evil Village Is Getting A Third-Person Mode This October
I love first person games, it's a great perspective when you want the audience to embody the character. Mostly action and silent protagonists.
Third person though, is better when you have a protag that you want the audience to connect to, and feel for. I feel like horror games benefit greatly from it.
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul People don't buy PS+ for the free games, they do it for the online.
Not all games from Sony end up on PS+. The Last Guardian is 5+ years old and, at least to my knowledge, has never been given away. Between not being guaranteed, and inconsistency in releases, relying on PS+ for your games is not viable.
And PS Now only had like 3 million subs. So I mean, if you want PS Extra to have 3 millions, or if we dream big, 5 million, then OK. Great success.
Again, these aren't the same. You keep comparing apples to oranges and expecting the same results.
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul You're still conflating Cinema releases and physical releases, aren't you?
Cinema release = no equivalent
Blu-ray/dvd physical release = standard game launch
Disney+ = Game Pass/PS+
Cinema launches aren't the same as blu-ray/dvd physical releases, nor the same as streaming releases. Someone who goes to watch at the cinema can still get value out of Disney+ because they no longer have access to the content when it hits the streaming service. Anyone buying physical has no need for streaming and streamers have no need for physical, because having one gives you the same, at home, experience, that you can rewatch. That's why physical sales declined when streaming became a thing.
Trying to compare the at home experience of a video game to the cinema experience, rather than the at home blu-ray is flawed.
I also want to reiterate the difference between Game Pass and PS+.
Game Pass is an alternative. If you buy GP, you don't have to buy Halo, or Gears, or Forza, because you get them at the same time as everybody else. That's $180per year as you say.
PS+ is a supplement service. If you buy PS Extra, you either have to wait like a second class citizen or you buy the game at launch. Which makes that $100 + $70 for every title you don't want to wait for. The only way to make PS extra better value in this case, is to wait for everything and buy no more than 1 PS 1st party title a year.
But you can Sony are expecting everybody to not just pay for the service, but then also maintain the $70 per title, which devalues your sub service.
So, while GP is viable as both a 3rd and 1st party service, PS+ is only good as a 3rd party service.
Your best move, would be to get GP, get all MS and 3rd party games on Xbox and PC, and pay for 1st party titles separately.
Apart from those who like to throw money at Sony, or those that won't purchase the titles, PS+ is a pointless service.
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul 3rd party doesn't count. The reason 3rd parties are meant to do well on sub services is because they reach an audience that they otherwise wouldn't have. Marvel is not a 3rd party indie studio. The point is Sony has a massive audience and it want to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to launch day and sub sales.
I fear you are missing the clear point. Physical movie sales have declined because of streaming services. Sony thinks their launch sales won't decline despite a guarantee they will be on a sub service.
The strat that Sony is copying is one of low physical sales. Yet you are arguing as if they will remain high.
I also want to make sure you aren't conflating Cinema releases and physical releases.
The only way that Sony can copy this strat and have both the launch sales and the sub service be highly valuable is if 1) Sony finds an entirely new untapped market to fill the gap, or 2) Sony buyers double dip.
Re: Rumour: Xbox's Phil Spencer Got 'Really Frustrated' Last Year Over Use Of CG Trailers
CG trailers do nothing for me now. They clearly have nothing to show, and so are showing me nothing and wanting me to be excited for nothing but my own imagination. Nah.
There's only one other way to do a CG trailer, and that is to laugh along with me about you having nothing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClhDyC0ZECs
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul Yes, but Game Pass has launch day releases.
Disney bring in most of their money through Cinema releases, not physical releases. Also, I don't remember Disney hanging the quality of their titles on their physical releases.
Sony's model doesn't make sense.
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul OK, but physical movie sales have plummeted since streaming came about. And cinema releases have no equivalent in video games.
The current hold outs cite quality and continued access as reasons for physical purchase, but quality isn't an issue with downloads.
If Sony commit to having people buy at launch, they diminish the sub's value. Or they'll be wasting a lot of money marketing a game to people who are going to wait for the subscription release.
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul So those people. Were they trading the cinema and/or physical copies for streaming, or were they double/triple dipping?
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul And Disney plus has exclusive Marvel shows.
We just gonna ignore this part then.
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
@uptownsoul If you go watch a Marvel movie in the cinema, you do not then have that movie to take home with you. And Disney plus has exclusive Marvel shows.
If I bought God of War Ragnorok at launch, I still have that when it hits the sub service.
It's not the exact same approach...
Re: PlayStation's Xbox Game Pass Competitor Goes Live Today In The US
Don't understand the appeal here.
If the plan is to sell new games to the core userbase, who is subscribing to this? I don't see the people who buy a handful of, or cheap games, to be convinced to pay more money for a collection of games currated by someone else.
I think it's more likely that either the core userbase pays twice (very likely given how brand loyal it is) or the core userbase stops buying at launch and does the "I'll wait for it to come to premium".
Re: Todd Howard Says There Will Be 'Over 1,000 Planets' In Starfield
I totally understand the criticism here. Bigger doesn't always mean better. Devs are always trying to go bigger and not really thinking of the end experience. I think something like MAG is a great example of that. Massive MP game, but absolute chaos in practice. Is it really possible for us to explore an entire galaxy in a video game?. None of us really have the time for that.
However, this is a space exploration RPG, it needs to feel bigger than just 10 planets. I saw people commenting "NMS has X so Starfield better have X or this will be embarrassing", so you know that if Starfield didn't have 1000s of planets, they'd just be complaining that Starfield didn't have it, and felt small for a game in that genre.
So our choices are 'Small', 'Barren', or 'Too Big'. If we get 10 hand crafted colonies on 5-6 densely packed solar systems, with engaging stories across the inhabitants, and the rest is big and mostly empty (like how the actual universe is), I'll consider that a win.
Re: Bethesda Shares An Extensive First Look At Starfield Gameplay
If this game had been too much of a departure from Bethesda RPGs, I'd probably not be as interested.
If I was bored of a studios's output, I'd be buying from another studio.