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(09-02-2023, 09:09 PM)Nintex wrote: Looks like a complete reboot


Oh cool, The Chinese Room.

Prepare for a bunch of pretentious wankery.
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ahem.

Yall folx ever heard about this new game called 'Starfield'?

They're hyping it up like it's the next big thing in gaming. But you know what I think? They should call it 'Shitfield.'
 I mean, seriously, they've got us all excited about exploring the cosmos and conquering the stars, but let's be honest, half the time we're just gonna be stuck fixing our spaceship's toilet. 

'Houston, we've got a clog!'

Whatsthedeal
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No Man's Sky years ago was a better game than Starfield, let alone NMS today.  Nobody makes bland and buggy shit quite like Bethesda, though, so of course it has it's fans thirsty for more of that Bethsoft bugs and bland.
1 user liked this post: Potato
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I'm kind of enjoying Starfield, but the PC performance (for such bang on average visuals) and UI, far out. Not sure how these were okay'ed it past both the devs and testers given the extra time Father Spencer gave them to sort out bugs supposedly.
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I'm enjoying it. The story is alright. Tons of shit to do. It's only crashed once and bugs have been minimal. There's negatives for sure. The space flight being the biggest. When I started it I thought maybe I'd have to level up to get that NMS space exploration but that's not happening. Is it better than F76? Absolutely. Is it on Skyrim's level? No.
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That mouse'll work great on the go. Just let me lug around this foldable table so I can play some fps games.
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lol, Unity going to start charging devs for every install of a game going forward. 

Now you can bankrupt your least favorite devs by reinstalling the game. 

1 user liked this post: chronovore
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Guess this means no more Unity Games on Xbox GamePass.




To be fair the freemium model is becoming unsustainable.
- Selling data to China or ads for kids are off the table because of new EU privacy and digital regulations (and that is still a decent chunk of the market)
- 'Growth' is no longer good enough for investors, they want profits
- Fewer games are being made overall and it is difficult to set-up new game studios in current economic conditions so there aren't many opportunities to sell new software licenses
- After years of heavy competition between Amazon, Google and Microsoft there have been many price increases for cloud hosting recently

Handing an engine with basically free lifetime updates to developers for free without any way to earn revenue from that engine is kind of insane in current conditions.
There was sort of the expectation that if you hit big with your game on a free engine, you would turn around and donate money to the engine guys too but literally nobody does that.
Devs just complain everything is too expensive until the money rolls in.
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Sony sending its Direct State of Play out to die on the same day as the Nintendo Direct

Whoo
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3 users liked this post: Uncle, D3RANG3D, Potato
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Nintex dateline='[url=tel:1694555335' wrote: 1694555335[/url]']
Guess this means no more Unity Games on Xbox GamePass.




To be fair the freemium model is becoming unsustainable.
- Selling data to China or ads for kids are off the table because of new EU privacy and digital regulations (and that is still a decent chunk of the market)
- 'Growth' is no longer good enough for investors, they want profits
- Fewer games are being made overall and it is difficult to set-up new game studios in current economic conditions so there aren't many opportunities to sell new software licenses
- After years of heavy competition between Amazon, Google and Microsoft there have been many price increases for cloud hosting recently

Handing an engine with basically free lifetime updates to developers for free without any way to earn revenue from that engine is kind of insane in current conditions.
There was sort of the expectation that if you hit big with your game on a free engine, you would turn around and donate money to the engine guys too but literally nobody does that.
Devs just complain everything is too expensive until the money rolls in.

It’s been 4-5 years since I last paid for it, but Unity was free for personal use, paid for professionals. The Plus and Pro tiers were both paid, I think $600/year and $1300/year, respectively. 

One place I worked would not allow me to install the free version on company hardware, even though I would be neither authoring nor creating builds. They would only install Pro, and only allow that if there was budget. 

When I worked personal projects, I had been on Pro and tried to downgrade to Plus once my year of Pro was done. Unity wouldn’t allow me to do that, so I switched to personal instead, and they got zero money instead of half a Pro sub. 

It’s not free if you’re making sellable items. 

It’s just an untenable business model that they further broke without thinking about consequences.
1 user liked this post: Nintex
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I bought a steam deck.
And I'm not even sure why.
1 user liked this post: Potato
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The Avengers game is leaving stores on the 30th, will remain playable and the events will cycle but can't be bought anymore, is $4 on Humble:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/marvels-avengers-the-definitive-edition
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benji dateline='[url=tel:1695099470' wrote: 1695099470[/url]']
The Avengers game is leaving stores on the 30th, will remain playable and the events will cycle but can't be bought anymore, is $4 on Humble:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/marvels-avengers-the-definitive-edition

Wait, what? Why?
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https://reddit.com/u/Shitty_Watercolour/s/3WHkBYmqT7

Wholesome user shitty-watercolors makes art that sometimes looks like my headspace when playing games that have no story.

And sometimes about playing with friends:
https://reddit.com/r/aoe2/s/I3WBfnqcHb
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Also LMAO at gaming Twitter and probably Reddit and shit going nuts because Xbox wanted to buy Nintendo/Valve.

These are just logical business chances you have to look at, ofcourse it would a career achievement for Phil if he could get some shit like that done.

Not that it was ever going to happen, zero chances of them actually pulling something like that off.

But people going crazy about it is just retarded.
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I liked when Arkham Asylum/City did it and it lasted the entire game and only got worse as the night progressed.
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Also

[Image: F6VOa3NXgAAFJ6a?format=jpg&name=large]

Eh Ill get it but not that impressed with the stuff added from this jpg
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(09-19-2023, 11:52 AM)MMaRsu wrote: Also LMAO at gaming Twitter and probably Reddit and shit going nuts because Xbox wanted to buy Nintendo/Valve.

These are just logical business chances you have to look at, ofcourse it would a career achievement for Phil if he could get some shit like that done.

Not that it was ever going to happen, zero chances of them actually pulling something like that off.

But people going crazy about it is just retarded.

These leaks are crazy. 

Especially the Spencer emails and their strategy. From what I can tell Phil has convinced the board of directors that Xbox can make $36B in revenue by 2030 but some others think the GamePass business model isn't going to work (and we're already seeing cracks). 

I don't think he has built a strong enough foundation yet to make his strategy work. It seems like they're just going to be spread too thin across a number of devices and platforms with no clear focus.
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(09-19-2023, 05:20 PM)Nintex wrote:
(09-19-2023, 11:52 AM)MMaRsu wrote: Also LMAO at gaming Twitter and probably Reddit and shit going nuts because Xbox wanted to buy Nintendo/Valve.

These are just logical business chances you have to look at, ofcourse it would a career achievement for Phil if he could get some shit like that done.

Not that it was ever going to happen, zero chances of them actually pulling something like that off.

But people going crazy about it is just retarded.

 the GamePass business model isn't going to work (and we're already seeing cracks). 

Are we? Where are we seeing this

The leaks arent crazy at all.

I'd advise listening to Jeff Gerstmann who has been in the industry for years, and doesn't oversensationalize this news like basically every other user on Twitter/YT is doing to farm engagement clicks.

https://www.twitch.tv/jeffgerstmann
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why listen to old man jeff when you can watch hot ass fleekazoid videos wtf?
1 user liked this post: Nintex
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Quote:Are we? Where are we seeing this
Look at that leaked list of possible deals.

Microsoft identifies a bunch of 'crown jewels' that publishers wouldn't make deals on which are basically cookie cutter sequels. They identify a bunch games impossible to bring over because there is no PC version (and that goes against their policy). And finally they trash a few games that turned out to be big hits (Baldurs Gate 3). So they are still very much the company that passed on signing GTA3 exclusive when they could.

They also realize that there is very little interesting enough to 'buy' within 16 months in terms of 'exclusives' to fill the gap of no 1st party releases.

There's also the issue that Xbox gamers aren't buying as many games because the expectation is that they will appear on GamePass eventually anyway.

To keep people subscribed and add more subscriptions they need a steady supply of (exclusive) high quality content and there simply isn't enough of it. They are also pretty much forced to put games like Starfield on Steam and not have those as GamePass exclusive. 

Games also have to be designed differently for GamePass because they measure success in 'hours played' vs. copies sold or player counts. In Forza Motorsport they are changing the reward system so you need to use a car for 3 to 5 hours to accumulate enough car points to buy its upgrades. There is a backlash against GAAS games (and EA was dead wrong about singleplayer games if we look at what is currently popular) and Microsoft has created a platform mostly catered towards the GAAS model, specifically yesterdays GAAS when it comes to third party games.
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(09-19-2023, 08:55 AM)chronovore wrote:
benji dateline='[url=tel:1695099470' wrote: 1695099470[/url]']
The Avengers game is leaving stores on the 30th, will remain playable and the events will cycle but can't be bought anymore, is $4 on Humble:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/marvels-avengers-the-definitive-edition

Wait, what? Why?
They announced this back in January or so, the lead left, the DLC plans were cancelled, the team was cut down to a small team to transition it away from live service (they went on to unlock everything, do some more tweaking and make "Definitive Edition" after initial suggestions were just the original game would remain) and once they were done the game would be turned off at the end of this month and everyone would move over to Tomb Raider. I would suspect it has to do with the license contract, if they aren't operating the game they can't sell it. Seems like an extra disastrous deal if they can't recoup longtail sales on this thing at $5 for years everytime some new Marvel thing comes out. I'm sure those LEGO ones bring in pretty nice revenue with that.

This thing is discounted almost everywhere (also $4 on Steam for example) including on consoles if people want to grab it, I just saw it at the top of Humble's sales leaderboard and remembered why.
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Phils internal memo about the leak... leaked.
Quote:Team,

Today, several documents submitted in the court proceedings related to our proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard were unintentionally disclosed. I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are well over a year old and our plans have evolved.

I also know we all take the confidentiality of our plans and our partners’ information very seriously. This leak obviously is not us living up to that expectation. We will learn from what happened and be better going forward. We all put incredible amounts of passion and energy into our work, and this is never how we want that hard work to be shared with the community. That said, there’s so much more to be excited about, and when we’re ready, we’ll share the real plans with our players.

In closing, I appreciate all of the work that you pour into Team Xbox to surprise and delight our players. In the days and weeks ahead, let’s stay focused on what we can control: continuing the amazing success of Starfield, the upcoming launch of the incredible and accessible Forza Motorsport, and continuing to build games, services and devices that millions of players can enjoy.

Phil
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(09-19-2023, 09:27 PM)Nintex wrote: Phils internal memo about the leak... leaked.
Quote:Team,

Today, several documents submitted in the court proceedings related to our proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard were unintentionally disclosed. I know this is disappointing, even if many of the documents are well over a year old and our plans have evolved.

I also know we all take the confidentiality of our plans and our partners’ information very seriously. This leak obviously is not us living up to that expectation. We will learn from what happened and be better going forward. We all put incredible amounts of passion and energy into our work, and this is never how we want that hard work to be shared with the community. That said, there’s so much more to be excited about, and when we’re ready, we’ll share the real plans with our players.

In closing, I appreciate all of the work that you pour into Team Xbox to surprise and delight our players. In the days and weeks ahead, let’s stay focused on what we can control: continuing the amazing success of Starfield, the upcoming launch of the incredible and accessible Forza Motorsport, and continuing to build games, services and devices that millions of players can enjoy.

Phil

Some poor corporate comms schmuck had to write an email in plain English and then our friend Phil came along and insisted on stuffing all this weasel word garbage in straight from the strategic planning document.
1 user liked this post: Nintex
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Something else was revealed in the leaks, 75% of the Xbox Series consoles sold are the S model.
In other words, Series X is not their focus. 


Looks like the price cut worked for PS5 in Europe. Switch sales still up but it seems like the Zelda boost has faded.
Xbox continues to drop.
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What a week

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Spoiler:  (click to show)
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