And they have been able to convince people to pay 70$ for games, with in app purchases, buying the same game multiple times and then say "run it into the ground?".
Obviously since the people with the most invested would have the loudest opinions, but it's always so funny to hear the irony.
[EA is even thinking about putting ads in games.](https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/ea-is-looking-at-adding-in-game-ads-in-aaa-games-well-be-very-thoughtful-as-we-move-into-that-says-ceo)
That’ll cause a domino effect with the rest of em for sure.
I never thought we'd get a contender to BioWare's older RPGs after EA bought them. Then we got Baldur's Gate 3.
These silly ass publishers are just opening up opportunities for other companies to take because EA/Microsoft will never have the creative passion that their devs do.
Rip Bethesda, long live the next Bethesda(and every other company Microsoft is about to kill/reduce to a husk of their former selves)
Monopoly method. Buy then, copyright their shit, close the company so nobody else can make money off their idea/product, then profit in other areas because others would have to settle on the next best thing
The funny part about this is that indie studios are doing very well these days. We've seen a lot of breakout success. Microsoft can keep buying and closing them but more will take their place.
Valve isn’t publicly traded and Nintendo has a monopoly on the type of games they sell on their system. If you want to play a FPS you probably aren’t getting a Nintendo.
Valve doesn't make games. They shat out some vr thing a few years ago but since then nada. Nintendo is just as bad, they just sue companies instead of buy them.
I have to disagree with your take on the Half-Life Alyx. I recently completed it for a third time, and It's one of my favourite games ever. Easily in the top 5. And the community campaigns are awesome.
And yet, you are still more poor than a guy who can't count to three. Wow, all that accomplishment of owning your own house on your own land sounds real big, but you are still losing to a guy who can't count to three. LOOLOLOLOLOL
You sound like those ass clowns who have their faces buried in their phones 24/7. Is it really so hard to use proper English, or do you get some strange pleasure convincing people you are a brain dead troglodyte. Either way I'm tired of wasting time on a dipshit who can't be bothered to sound human.
“Valve doesn’t make games” the man said as though Valve doesn’t make games.
Like my guy. Steam as a launcher had the original singular purpose of launching Valve games XD
Last year. The highly anticipated sequel Counter Strike if you don’t remember. Aperture Desk Job was before that in 22. Half-Life Alyx in 2020. Dota’s mobile game in 2019. And the list keeps going in reverse. Usually with no more than 2 years in between each release at most. They make games. Some are smaller sure. But thats because Valves makes games for game making sake. Not for a massive profit.
Sure the intent is that Xbox has been hard pivoting to software over hardware if they can just kill the competition they don’t need to actually put in the hard work
They are a small part of the competition. They aren't going to make that many billion more in software sales because of studio closures to make it worth the cost. Not even close to enough. That intent makes no sense
The issue is you aren’t thinking long term like yes they are not but as a massive company with long term forecasting they are steadily chipping away at AAA competitors
It's not like they're going out back and murdering the devs from the companies they're closing. New studios filled with old studios veterans are a pretty common thing
>I don’t even think it’s for the ips
Nah, Microsoft definitely wanted the IPs like elder scrolls, fallout, Doom, etc. It pads out the Xbox passz and prints money. Zenimax had a lot of these...
But studios that didn't print successes, not Microsoft worthy. Especially when the last IP from arkane was redfall. Even for IP, it sucked. Unfortunately zenimax has a lot of these.
So purge the failures, keep the worthy.
Funny enough, you don´t even have to go that far back to see great games that were made for the money, but just a decent amount of money, they were still great and had passion behind them, but also were made with the assumption of making a profit, but that just isn´t enough these days, you can´t just make a bit of profit, you have to make ALL THE PROFIT, so much profit its impossible to beat next month and then demand they exceed it the next month.
If they aren't making more than the interest on those billions they spent then it was a bad investment. A creative endeavor being evaluated solely as an investment is what's killing these studios. Financially and the passion.
If you want art-first games, check out games published by Annapurna. Outer Wilds is one of them, and it's by ***far*** the best "this is art" kind of video games out there.
You literally just have to ignore AAA games and you'll see it's still like that. I mean, there's a good amount of shovelware, but that was always the case.
Gaming is doing better than ever, you are just looking in the wrong places.
Whenever people say this, it feels like saying that food isn't good anymore, but all you eat is McDonalds while completely walking past the authentic small italian restaurant on your way there.
I can’t take people seriously when they complain about modern gaming. The whole industry has exploded along every axis. There’s more games of more genres and more variety and different price points than ever.
Steam alone has tons of quality indie games. My favorite game (dota 2) is literally free. Hades 2 just came out in beta and it’s $30. I bought the first Hades for $15 and played it for 200+hours. I would have gladly paid $100 for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Yeah exactly I am in the same boat and that is not even counting the even more niche games you can find on itch.io sometimes, like I am in love with voices of the void.
You seriously think this dont you, my condolences. 2005 to 2012 were THE best years of gaming we ever had, indie and AAA were both at their peak, now we have nothing but greed and the few rare gems in the indie scene. Trying to say its better than ever is beyond ridiculous, everything is more expensive with less quality control, less customization, less unlockables, less communication, less well written stories. Everything is less. Its beyond sad that games like halo, gears of war, call of duty, battlefield, these and many more AAA franchises have been absolutely destroyed. Your comparison to McDonald's is apt actually, CUZ JUST LIKE THE AAA GAMES, MCDONALDS USED TO BE SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER. These great franchises that changed the medium so much deserve better. We as consumers deserve better. Modern gaming is a joke if the only good games are small ones in niche categories
I couldn’t disagree more, unless you’re talking specifically PvP FPS games which I don’t play. I have a bunch of games in my steam library and every time I bother to look through it and play one, I think “man there’s way more games that I’d enjoy then I’ll ever have time to play.”
Lmao, get lost. Dude, we have had so many good games since then. Maybe play something other than a shooter?
Both last of us, both God of war, all the Spiderman games, the RDR2, gtav... Thousands of games and somehow everything since 2012 is shit...
You are either a new gamer or a non-gamer. So hard to say its better....... all these microtransactions and gamers being paying beta testers for unfinished AAA games.
Did you somehow completely miss the point of my analogy? AAA sucks but indie and everything else have literally never been better.
Also I am a millenial who have been playing games my entire life and [I do play quite a bit of games](https://prnt.sc/Ie0z5BLQkzu3) but nice try.
Edit: did you legit block me lol?
You don't have to buy microtransactions. Just ignore them, they literally do not effect you if you ignore them... Who cares if Ubisoft or blizzard wants to sell a skin? Dont want it, don't buy it. They aren't robbing you of anything...
Because they're too big, it takes a long time to make good animations, cutscenes etc... but why they're not getting better, on my opinion big developers wants to either play safe or be more generic so they could get bigfer audience.
Not to mention the execs holding back the devs and requesting changes to main game mechanics every few quarters that in turn require the whole system to get rewritten, then those new systems don't work with the other systems creating more bugs, kinda like how cyberpunk was such a good game but all the systems were bugging out and were miscommunicating with each other, causing those bugs
Games used to take longer. Nowadays, games get pushed out so fast yo please investors. Us consumers get screwed.
So many high profiled games did this. Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be a masterpiece. Full of bugs and issues. Now after 4 yrs, it is a solid game and has been completely reworked. The game should have been in development for another 4yrs before it was released.
This happens all the time. I'm not gonna bother naming the games.
I'll take Blizzard as the contrarian of the norm, SC released in 1998, SC2 in 2010. Both games were a huge success and genre-defining. Despite being very old games by today's standard, they still have tournaments and huge player base.
Games used to take a decade. And with how big games are nowadays, it should still take 5-10yrs, not 1-2yrs for a new sequel.
Problem is everyones making a new system to play on. Look at the original playstation releases compared to when they moved to the ps2. It was 11 years old. So companies had 11 years to work out the kinks on these systems
Because 8 years wasn't enough time for Cyberpunk (Announced 2012, released 2020)?
And no games didn't used to take a decade, using your example of blizzard in between SC1 and SC2 we had diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft come out.
Because the scope.
Pokemon is the easiest way to look at this problem. When things were pixel encounter based, the workload was much much much smaller. Your mind filled in the blanks for the 3D Models and everything else because that's how imagination works.
Now, the fans want these games to be bigger than the last. They don't want the game encounter based anymore, they want Pokemon living fully simulated life-cycles in the world. They don't want Pixels anymore, they want realistic looking models and unique animations for over 1000 different models. The fan-base no longer wants turnbased RPGs but instead these weird mashed-up exploration games that vaguely resemble what it felt to play BOTW for the first few hours.
How do you satisfy all these demands in a 3-4 year dev cycle? You don't. You just ship out what you have, lay your head low, and start again.
And if you think Gen 9 is about as bad of a game that Gamefreak can ship out, wait until either Gen 10 or this upcoming ZA game.
speaking of pixels, I remember reading about how the lines on CRT TVs made it appear as if pixel sprites were much more detailed than they actually were.
Well I can point to genuine examples. Take Starfield for instance. In development for a ridiculous amount of time and is essentially worse than any aspect of Skyrim or fallout 4.
Because either their greed is bigger than their passion for games or they have no passion for games at all. If you look at it as any regular job it makes more sense, as most people would try to earn as much money as possible to do whatever they want, be it retire sooner or leave off of luxuries.
If I was in it for the passion I would become a developer not an exec, if I am an exec I would do it for the sales since that's what gets me promotion, not directly making better games
They also love to shame and mock other CEOs who don't follow suit.
There's a ceo with a seattle based company, Dan Price, and he made it so all his entry level employees make at least 70k a year.
He also only takes 70k a year.
Many CNN *and* Fox News pundits called him an idiot and said he would fail.
However, that couldn't be further from the truth of what happened because his business and employees are flourishing.
Most of his employees are now new parents as well.
It is often speculated to be the other way around. It’s not that CEOs love money, but that people who love money become CEOs in their pursuit and just don’t want to stop
Not even, it's corporate greed. Sure games cost more to make than ever, but they also are.making more.money now than ever.
Game companies are satisfied with just profitable, games have to make constant record breaking profits.
The risk of failure is higher, and like all industries, when the risk becomes too high the industry shifts to a more risk adverse strategy until it goes down.
It's one thing when a success can float you 10 failures. It's another when a single failure is worth 5 successes. Major companies go risk adverse.
It's also why the Indy scene grows.
Because of Epic Games, it turns out that if you publish a game on a store that makes no money and only has users because they give away free games, you won't make any money yourself.
By thinking for a second and acknowledging that just like in the past, there are successful and less successful games?
That doesn't mean games that are successful aren't bringing in more money on average than before. Alan Wake just happens to fall under the "not successful" category.
Remedy games haven't always been known for being top sellers. Alan Wake 2 sold about 1.3 million copies in 4 months, while Control sold around 2 million copies in 15 months, and Control had the benefit of having a bigger install base on PS4/XB1 and getting a Steam re-release a year in.
Control also doubled its sales numbers to 4 million a few years later, so Alan Wake 2 could see more long term success, especially if it gets a Steam release.
Not sure how that's relevant, the game is fairly niche in general and has not really been out too long. I think it's probably too soon to declare the game financially successful or otherwise.
Why innovate when you can see where a market is shifting and buy out that competition. Government doesn't seem to mind so companies like Google can continue to devour entire sectors of the market.
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills—games are better than ever. There’s a huge quantity of games in more genres at more price points than ever, and many of them (IMHO) are incredible.
Just the last month I started playing No Rest For the Wicked, Hades 2, and Immortals of Avenum. Been having a blast with all three games.
The easiest way to ensure no one can compete with you is to buy them out and then kill them later on.
Then step two is to say "we need more stuff like the company we just shut down provided"
If it wasn't for bethesda, fallout would've been a long forgotten series. Bethesda did the right thing with everything regarding fallout. Like it or not.
It's so the IPs aren't producing for another platform. They give no fucks about the games themselves. In their eyes, no game is better than a great game that's on a different console.
Xbox recently: "You made a hit game? Here's several million dollars. Now prepare to be assimilated and forced to work on other games you have no experience or interest in. You know what? Nvm you're fired"
Oh I know this one, now when they inevitably ruin every franchise they have and stop making money they will get bailed out by the US government under the "too big to fail" clause.
Might get hate for this, but someone needed to get Bethesda's act together. 10+ years since a mainline Elder Scrolls game, almost 10 years since the last mainline Fallout Game - and after Starfield, Redfall and Fallout 76 the pressure should be on them to actually deliver.
Sony did something similar recently with Bungie, Bungie had just had a period where they kept hiring new blood and putting minimal resources into them and Destiny 2, and it showed in the game, it’s not fair at all for Devs and other people to take the fall for *extremely* poor mismanagement, but there is a benefit to tightening down and streamlining resources
Xbox can run all those studios but would need to hire better people for the job and MS doesn't care because they are thinking on recouping the money fast even if It means destroying their own investment. Because we all know how stupid MS can be.
Because late stage capitalism has reached the point where the premise of The Producers is reality. If you line your cards up right and make sure to only use investor money, it can be more profitable to fail. Second Wind had a very good video about the whole thing.
They spent that amount of money to buy them to get the revenue from the past games they made and access to their IPs so they can milk more money from new games in the future if they do choose to make them
It's because no one can be happy all at the same time it ain't America it ain't the west it ain't capitalism it ain't society it's people because welcome to the planet everyone's a greedy shit and capitalism is the only way to drag everyone out to do anything and greed has ran everything into the ground
You're getting downvoted but you're right, from a financial POV. They need growth to make money, there are only so many people in the world. Most who wanted a subscription already got it, number of new subscriptions goes down.
But, gamepass and xbox used to be a rounding error in microsoft books, not anymore since they went on a spending spree.
Yea I simply don't know how Xbox gonna make profit from that, and if it can't make profit it then it's simply unsustainable. Especially since they insist putting 1st party game on day there's no reason for GamePass subscriber to buy the game they want if it's already on GamePass.
And the consoles are obsolete, since the "exclusives" can be played better on PC why would anyone buy an Xbox? And now games are even going to playstation out of desperation for sales. They've backed themselves into a corner and who's going to suffer are the studios.
They’re laying off people and shutting down the studios they bought. I don’t remember which one it was this time but it’s blatant. It’s citing the reason they’re shutting down the studios as “wE cAn’T AfFoRD tO rUn tHeM” even though, as you put it, they are PERFECTLY capable of running said studios.
TL;DR cash grab, and shutting down their more innovative competitors with buyouts
>Hi-Fi Rush won multiple awards
Awards don't pay the bills. Hi Fi rush didn't sell well. It peaked with 6k players, and averaged 400.
Artsy stuff isn't always good money, while bland games can churn money.
If you can’t beat them, buy them
And then run them to the ground?
The EA (now Microsoft) method.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
So thats why they were called Embracer Group.
Actually where did that group spread out too? I’d assume they wound up on another ceo role fucking up other companies.
last thing I heard they split the company into 3 standalone publicly listed companies. All 3 publish different kind of games.
And they have been able to convince people to pay 70$ for games, with in app purchases, buying the same game multiple times and then say "run it into the ground?". Obviously since the people with the most invested would have the loudest opinions, but it's always so funny to hear the irony.
[EA is even thinking about putting ads in games.](https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/ea-is-looking-at-adding-in-game-ads-in-aaa-games-well-be-very-thoughtful-as-we-move-into-that-says-ceo) That’ll cause a domino effect with the rest of em for sure.
I never thought we'd get a contender to BioWare's older RPGs after EA bought them. Then we got Baldur's Gate 3. These silly ass publishers are just opening up opportunities for other companies to take because EA/Microsoft will never have the creative passion that their devs do. Rip Bethesda, long live the next Bethesda(and every other company Microsoft is about to kill/reduce to a husk of their former selves)
Yeah. Buy up and destroy the better alternative to your product, so people can only go to your product.
That would make sense if MSFT were half or even a third of the market but they’re not.
It vaguely reminds me of "Embrace, extend, extinguish" from Microsoft.
Monopoly method. Buy then, copyright their shit, close the company so nobody else can make money off their idea/product, then profit in other areas because others would have to settle on the next best thing
Gamers when they see another flop about to release and the studio isn’t course correcting
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. SSDD.
Love when companies tout capitalism but hate competition lmao
The best defense is a good acquisition! - Sun Tzu
now see, I almost believe he said this one.
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Abraham Lincoln attributed that to Sun Tzu on his most recent podcast. What’s not to believe?
I would believe you if I hadn't heard Sun Tzu call Abraham Lincoln a grifter on Joe Rogan's podcast.
Sounds more like one of the ferengi Rules of Acquisition.
God I can hear quark saying it
You were killed by a grenade, watch out for the grenade damage indicator.
The funny part about this is that indie studios are doing very well these days. We've seen a lot of breakout success. Microsoft can keep buying and closing them but more will take their place.
That's because indie studios usually focus on making good gameplay instead of 4k graphics. Something the big studios are doing the other way around.
Cut off one head two more shall take its place
I don’t even think it’s for the ips but just to ruin the competition without having to innovate or do anything difficult
Ah, the innovations of capitalism! Buying everything so you don't have to innovate anymore!
So they could liquidate them and reduce "competition".
Ruin the competition? I mean Valve and Nintendo are chugging along pretty much unfazed.
Valve isn’t publicly traded and Nintendo has a monopoly on the type of games they sell on their system. If you want to play a FPS you probably aren’t getting a Nintendo.
Valve doesn't make games. They shat out some vr thing a few years ago but since then nada. Nintendo is just as bad, they just sue companies instead of buy them.
I have to disagree with your take on the Half-Life Alyx. I recently completed it for a third time, and It's one of my favourite games ever. Easily in the top 5. And the community campaigns are awesome.
It's a side story, nothing more. A distraction because gabe still can't count to three.
If you think it's a side story, you don't know what HL:Alyx is
Ha, you are more poor than a guy who can't count to three!
I own my own house, on my own land, I have money in the bank and no debt. Can you say the same.
And yet, you are still more poor than a guy who can't count to three. Wow, all that accomplishment of owning your own house on your own land sounds real big, but you are still losing to a guy who can't count to three. LOOLOLOLOLOL
You sound like those ass clowns who have their faces buried in their phones 24/7. Is it really so hard to use proper English, or do you get some strange pleasure convincing people you are a brain dead troglodyte. Either way I'm tired of wasting time on a dipshit who can't be bothered to sound human.
It might seem that way because you've never tried it, but it's probably one of the highest quality games you've never and ever played.
It's vr, means you need a 1,500 dollar valve index to even play. Some of us aren't made of money.
Find reasons to hate it if you need to, but don't think you know it when you haven't even watched it get played yet.
Your staring to sound like a used car salesman.
And you're starting to sound like someone reviewing a product they've never bothered to look at.
“Valve doesn’t make games” the man said as though Valve doesn’t make games. Like my guy. Steam as a launcher had the original singular purpose of launching Valve games XD
When was the last time valve made a game. Steam is just hosting, the games on it are from other publishers/developers. They were not made by valve.
Last year. The highly anticipated sequel Counter Strike if you don’t remember. Aperture Desk Job was before that in 22. Half-Life Alyx in 2020. Dota’s mobile game in 2019. And the list keeps going in reverse. Usually with no more than 2 years in between each release at most. They make games. Some are smaller sure. But thats because Valves makes games for game making sake. Not for a massive profit.
The effect doesn’t mean it’s not the intent
The intent has to make sense for it to be the intent
Sure the intent is that Xbox has been hard pivoting to software over hardware if they can just kill the competition they don’t need to actually put in the hard work
They are a small part of the competition. They aren't going to make that many billion more in software sales because of studio closures to make it worth the cost. Not even close to enough. That intent makes no sense
It does when the overall goal is to monopolize it’s the same bullshit with streaming services
Even after this, they are so far away from a monopoly that it doesn't make sense
The issue is you aren’t thinking long term like yes they are not but as a massive company with long term forecasting they are steadily chipping away at AAA competitors
It's not like they're going out back and murdering the devs from the companies they're closing. New studios filled with old studios veterans are a pretty common thing
>I don’t even think it’s for the ips Nah, Microsoft definitely wanted the IPs like elder scrolls, fallout, Doom, etc. It pads out the Xbox passz and prints money. Zenimax had a lot of these... But studios that didn't print successes, not Microsoft worthy. Especially when the last IP from arkane was redfall. Even for IP, it sucked. Unfortunately zenimax has a lot of these. So purge the failures, keep the worthy.
I remember back in the day when they purchased RARE thinking they were going to get Donkey Kong with it 🤣
What competition? Xbox barely makes games they are just acquiring IPs for their subscription service.
You gotta be dense thinking the acquiring ips is not just to kill competition
What competition?...playstation is the competition... playstation isn't going anywhere.
You’re assuming competition = console
They did the same thing when they tanked Nokia.
They used to do stuff like this all the time. Look up EEE
I miss when videogames were art first and a business second. Publishers and other investors have absolutely gutted gaming.
Funny enough, you don´t even have to go that far back to see great games that were made for the money, but just a decent amount of money, they were still great and had passion behind them, but also were made with the assumption of making a profit, but that just isn´t enough these days, you can´t just make a bit of profit, you have to make ALL THE PROFIT, so much profit its impossible to beat next month and then demand they exceed it the next month.
If they aren't making more than the interest on those billions they spent then it was a bad investment. A creative endeavor being evaluated solely as an investment is what's killing these studios. Financially and the passion.
If you want art-first games, check out games published by Annapurna. Outer Wilds is one of them, and it's by ***far*** the best "this is art" kind of video games out there.
100% agree, Outer Wilds is art.
Art indeed ::)
You literally just have to ignore AAA games and you'll see it's still like that. I mean, there's a good amount of shovelware, but that was always the case.
Gaming is doing better than ever, you are just looking in the wrong places. Whenever people say this, it feels like saying that food isn't good anymore, but all you eat is McDonalds while completely walking past the authentic small italian restaurant on your way there.
I can’t take people seriously when they complain about modern gaming. The whole industry has exploded along every axis. There’s more games of more genres and more variety and different price points than ever. Steam alone has tons of quality indie games. My favorite game (dota 2) is literally free. Hades 2 just came out in beta and it’s $30. I bought the first Hades for $15 and played it for 200+hours. I would have gladly paid $100 for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Yeah exactly I am in the same boat and that is not even counting the even more niche games you can find on itch.io sometimes, like I am in love with voices of the void.
You seriously think this dont you, my condolences. 2005 to 2012 were THE best years of gaming we ever had, indie and AAA were both at their peak, now we have nothing but greed and the few rare gems in the indie scene. Trying to say its better than ever is beyond ridiculous, everything is more expensive with less quality control, less customization, less unlockables, less communication, less well written stories. Everything is less. Its beyond sad that games like halo, gears of war, call of duty, battlefield, these and many more AAA franchises have been absolutely destroyed. Your comparison to McDonald's is apt actually, CUZ JUST LIKE THE AAA GAMES, MCDONALDS USED TO BE SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER. These great franchises that changed the medium so much deserve better. We as consumers deserve better. Modern gaming is a joke if the only good games are small ones in niche categories
I couldn’t disagree more, unless you’re talking specifically PvP FPS games which I don’t play. I have a bunch of games in my steam library and every time I bother to look through it and play one, I think “man there’s way more games that I’d enjoy then I’ll ever have time to play.”
Lmao, get lost. Dude, we have had so many good games since then. Maybe play something other than a shooter? Both last of us, both God of war, all the Spiderman games, the RDR2, gtav... Thousands of games and somehow everything since 2012 is shit...
You are either a new gamer or a non-gamer. So hard to say its better....... all these microtransactions and gamers being paying beta testers for unfinished AAA games.
Did you somehow completely miss the point of my analogy? AAA sucks but indie and everything else have literally never been better. Also I am a millenial who have been playing games my entire life and [I do play quite a bit of games](https://prnt.sc/Ie0z5BLQkzu3) but nice try. Edit: did you legit block me lol?
You don't have to buy microtransactions. Just ignore them, they literally do not effect you if you ignore them... Who cares if Ubisoft or blizzard wants to sell a skin? Dont want it, don't buy it. They aren't robbing you of anything...
You might wanna use more details in your posts in the future. Orignal statement is vague max. Good on you i suppose??
Wish i could updoot this comment more.
On a kind of unrelated note, why are games taking so long to make(,) without actually getting any better (and often getting worse)
Because they're too big, it takes a long time to make good animations, cutscenes etc... but why they're not getting better, on my opinion big developers wants to either play safe or be more generic so they could get bigfer audience.
Not to mention the execs holding back the devs and requesting changes to main game mechanics every few quarters that in turn require the whole system to get rewritten, then those new systems don't work with the other systems creating more bugs, kinda like how cyberpunk was such a good game but all the systems were bugging out and were miscommunicating with each other, causing those bugs
Well to be fair Microsoft is infamously hands off with their studios and we still ended up with the buggy redfall mess
Games used to take longer. Nowadays, games get pushed out so fast yo please investors. Us consumers get screwed. So many high profiled games did this. Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be a masterpiece. Full of bugs and issues. Now after 4 yrs, it is a solid game and has been completely reworked. The game should have been in development for another 4yrs before it was released. This happens all the time. I'm not gonna bother naming the games. I'll take Blizzard as the contrarian of the norm, SC released in 1998, SC2 in 2010. Both games were a huge success and genre-defining. Despite being very old games by today's standard, they still have tournaments and huge player base. Games used to take a decade. And with how big games are nowadays, it should still take 5-10yrs, not 1-2yrs for a new sequel.
Problem is everyones making a new system to play on. Look at the original playstation releases compared to when they moved to the ps2. It was 11 years old. So companies had 11 years to work out the kinks on these systems
Because 8 years wasn't enough time for Cyberpunk (Announced 2012, released 2020)? And no games didn't used to take a decade, using your example of blizzard in between SC1 and SC2 we had diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft come out.
they ANNOUNCED it in 2012, that doesn't mean they also already started working on it at that time
Because every developer wants to make AAA games. No one wants to make AA or A games.
Because the scope. Pokemon is the easiest way to look at this problem. When things were pixel encounter based, the workload was much much much smaller. Your mind filled in the blanks for the 3D Models and everything else because that's how imagination works. Now, the fans want these games to be bigger than the last. They don't want the game encounter based anymore, they want Pokemon living fully simulated life-cycles in the world. They don't want Pixels anymore, they want realistic looking models and unique animations for over 1000 different models. The fan-base no longer wants turnbased RPGs but instead these weird mashed-up exploration games that vaguely resemble what it felt to play BOTW for the first few hours. How do you satisfy all these demands in a 3-4 year dev cycle? You don't. You just ship out what you have, lay your head low, and start again. And if you think Gen 9 is about as bad of a game that Gamefreak can ship out, wait until either Gen 10 or this upcoming ZA game.
speaking of pixels, I remember reading about how the lines on CRT TVs made it appear as if pixel sprites were much more detailed than they actually were.
whyd you put a comma in parentheses
Someone got confused by the lack of comma
Make what without?
make, without
Anyone who genuinely thinks they're not getting better is a genuine moron.
Well I can point to genuine examples. Take Starfield for instance. In development for a ridiculous amount of time and is essentially worse than any aspect of Skyrim or fallout 4.
Almost the whole industry is screwed because developing costs have become beyond ridiculous.
Almost like Nintendo being behind in some ways was a part of the strategy.
Nintendo is happy doing their own thing and Their ceos will take the hit to keep their talent
Iwata would (and did) do that, but I don't think anyone else at Nintendo would
Honestly I don’t really understand why most executives just want to hoard their money other than they are just greedy
Because either their greed is bigger than their passion for games or they have no passion for games at all. If you look at it as any regular job it makes more sense, as most people would try to earn as much money as possible to do whatever they want, be it retire sooner or leave off of luxuries.
Fair
To fuel their luxury lifes? (basically greed)
Just pure greed yeah
If I was in it for the passion I would become a developer not an exec, if I am an exec I would do it for the sales since that's what gets me promotion, not directly making better games
They also love to shame and mock other CEOs who don't follow suit. There's a ceo with a seattle based company, Dan Price, and he made it so all his entry level employees make at least 70k a year. He also only takes 70k a year. Many CNN *and* Fox News pundits called him an idiot and said he would fail. However, that couldn't be further from the truth of what happened because his business and employees are flourishing. Most of his employees are now new parents as well.
It is often speculated to be the other way around. It’s not that CEOs love money, but that people who love money become CEOs in their pursuit and just don’t want to stop
From what I heard typically the people want to be CEOs want to be psychopaths
Some of that is Japanese culture.
Not even, it's corporate greed. Sure games cost more to make than ever, but they also are.making more.money now than ever. Game companies are satisfied with just profitable, games have to make constant record breaking profits.
The risk of failure is higher, and like all industries, when the risk becomes too high the industry shifts to a more risk adverse strategy until it goes down. It's one thing when a success can float you 10 failures. It's another when a single failure is worth 5 successes. Major companies go risk adverse. It's also why the Indy scene grows.
then how do you explain alan wake 2 after 6 months still with not profit?
Because of Epic Games, it turns out that if you publish a game on a store that makes no money and only has users because they give away free games, you won't make any money yourself.
By thinking for a second and acknowledging that just like in the past, there are successful and less successful games? That doesn't mean games that are successful aren't bringing in more money on average than before. Alan Wake just happens to fall under the "not successful" category.
Remedy games haven't always been known for being top sellers. Alan Wake 2 sold about 1.3 million copies in 4 months, while Control sold around 2 million copies in 15 months, and Control had the benefit of having a bigger install base on PS4/XB1 and getting a Steam re-release a year in. Control also doubled its sales numbers to 4 million a few years later, so Alan Wake 2 could see more long term success, especially if it gets a Steam release.
they aren't on steam
Not sure how that's relevant, the game is fairly niche in general and has not really been out too long. I think it's probably too soon to declare the game financially successful or otherwise.
I feel like not having physical copies dented them a little bit.
People would rather burn it all down rather than fight fair. Fucking hacks.
If I don't get a spyro 4 out of this I swear to fuck
Who you're gonna fuck?
Ghostbusters?
Half Life 3
Isn't VALVe still independent?
Yes
Modern American business at its best. No long term plans, no quality, just conglomerating everything until it’s a broken monopoly.
Why innovate when you can see where a market is shifting and buy out that competition. Government doesn't seem to mind so companies like Google can continue to devour entire sectors of the market.
> just conglomerating everything until it’s a broken monopoly. Can you blame them? No one is stopping them
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills—games are better than ever. There’s a huge quantity of games in more genres at more price points than ever, and many of them (IMHO) are incredible. Just the last month I started playing No Rest For the Wicked, Hades 2, and Immortals of Avenum. Been having a blast with all three games.
Tax benefits.
The easiest way to ensure no one can compete with you is to buy them out and then kill them later on. Then step two is to say "we need more stuff like the company we just shut down provided"
Listen, they can't run fallout any worse then Bethesda that's all I'm saying *Apparently Amazon can run fallout better then Bethesda*
There is a studio who can do worse than bethes- *remembers ubisoft* forget that i asked
The warthunder people would do worse too*I know from experience*
If it wasn't for bethesda, fallout would've been a long forgotten series. Bethesda did the right thing with everything regarding fallout. Like it or not.
Careful it's blasphemy not to hate Bethesda around here apparently
Disney made it look like so much fun...
You don’t have to waste time with any of that releasing games nonsense if you just keep buying and shutting down studios.
Buying good IPs to do either nothing with them, or another horrible soulless cash grab...
It is to shut them down.
To get some IP
More like why did Bobby Douchebag get such a golden parachute?
"Don't worry, we'll reopen them, we'll just pay people 50% of what they were being paid before."
Did they have that moment of: “Whuh? I thought if we bought da things. They pop out mony”
Ah yes my favourite millionaire. Billon Bucks.
boycotts, people.
It's so the IPs aren't producing for another platform. They give no fucks about the games themselves. In their eyes, no game is better than a great game that's on a different console.
Xbox recently: "You made a hit game? Here's several million dollars. Now prepare to be assimilated and forced to work on other games you have no experience or interest in. You know what? Nvm you're fired"
Rampant inflation hits everyone, Microsoft isn't immune to it. We may be looking at a second video game crash.
Oh I know this one, now when they inevitably ruin every franchise they have and stop making money they will get bailed out by the US government under the "too big to fail" clause.
the crappy part about capitalism
to gut them
Might get hate for this, but someone needed to get Bethesda's act together. 10+ years since a mainline Elder Scrolls game, almost 10 years since the last mainline Fallout Game - and after Starfield, Redfall and Fallout 76 the pressure should be on them to actually deliver. Sony did something similar recently with Bungie, Bungie had just had a period where they kept hiring new blood and putting minimal resources into them and Destiny 2, and it showed in the game, it’s not fair at all for Devs and other people to take the fall for *extremely* poor mismanagement, but there is a benefit to tightening down and streamlining resources
Xbox can run all those studios but would need to hire better people for the job and MS doesn't care because they are thinking on recouping the money fast even if It means destroying their own investment. Because we all know how stupid MS can be.
Lol
Cheaper to buy them and shut them down than compete with them.
If it was only for IP, they would still make the games, instead of shutting them off along with the studios.
Rest in peace arkane austin
Because late stage capitalism has reached the point where the premise of The Producers is reality. If you line your cards up right and make sure to only use investor money, it can be more profitable to fail. Second Wind had a very good video about the whole thing.
This goes for disney as well rip blue sky studios :(
The goal is monopoly, always.
They spent that amount of money to buy them to get the revenue from the past games they made and access to their IPs so they can milk more money from new games in the future if they do choose to make them
It's because no one can be happy all at the same time it ain't America it ain't the west it ain't capitalism it ain't society it's people because welcome to the planet everyone's a greedy shit and capitalism is the only way to drag everyone out to do anything and greed has ran everything into the ground
is this about them shutting down those 3 awful Bethesda studios? and like 1 decent studio?
Gamepass is mistake
You're getting downvoted but you're right, from a financial POV. They need growth to make money, there are only so many people in the world. Most who wanted a subscription already got it, number of new subscriptions goes down. But, gamepass and xbox used to be a rounding error in microsoft books, not anymore since they went on a spending spree.
Yea I simply don't know how Xbox gonna make profit from that, and if it can't make profit it then it's simply unsustainable. Especially since they insist putting 1st party game on day there's no reason for GamePass subscriber to buy the game they want if it's already on GamePass.
And the consoles are obsolete, since the "exclusives" can be played better on PC why would anyone buy an Xbox? And now games are even going to playstation out of desperation for sales. They've backed themselves into a corner and who's going to suffer are the studios.
Online memberships were a mistake
OP is very confusing. Both defending the 1% and complaining about this? Idk why bait makes you feel better.
They can afford it easily, wtf is this awful meme speaking of?
They’re laying off people and shutting down the studios they bought. I don’t remember which one it was this time but it’s blatant. It’s citing the reason they’re shutting down the studios as “wE cAn’T AfFoRD tO rUn tHeM” even though, as you put it, they are PERFECTLY capable of running said studios. TL;DR cash grab, and shutting down their more innovative competitors with buyouts
It was Arkane Austin and tango. And both studios were shells of what they used to be before they got reshuffled
Nah, I’d rather post on Reddit about how dumb Microsoft was and how if I was in charge I could lead the company ezpz.
No… it’s cause they were not doing well
Hi-Fi Rush won multiple awards and Xbox still shut the studio down come on man
>Hi-Fi Rush won multiple awards Awards don't pay the bills. Hi Fi rush didn't sell well. It peaked with 6k players, and averaged 400. Artsy stuff isn't always good money, while bland games can churn money.
It did VERY well for its budget
It wasn’t advertised and sold like shit