Does anyone AT MICROSOFT have any idea what Xbox is actually for? How are they planning on selling any Xboxes in future?
I'd be shocked if they had any kind of long-term plan. The short-sightedness of the current crop of tech execs is focused entirely on Number Go Up, which is more or less incompatible with investment in anything except the biggest-headline future (see the current AI gamble, or the Metaverse before that, or the blockchain before that).
People talk up the PS5 controller, meanwhile I have like my 11th or 12th variant of Xbox controller arriving today! (the translucent blue one)
I get the overall point mind.
Does anyone AT MICROSOFT have any idea what Xbox is actually for? How are they planning on selling any Xboxes in future?
It's starting to really look like they're planning to exit the console race after this generation, isn't it? Everything they're doing is designed to make money out of what they've already got, rather than build any kind of loyalty or reputation for the future. They're releasing their biggest games on their competitors' machines. They're buying studios for the games they've already got, rather than the games they might produce in the future. They're shutting promising teams down. They've got no plans for a mid-gen hardware refresh. Even their cloud gaming solution, which for a while looked like it might be a key part of their strategy going forward, seems to be being downplayed in favour of their new partnership with GeForce Now.
I mean as an Xbox owner I'm still happy enough with what I've got this gen - I've got more than enough to play, I still think Game Pass is pretty great, the PC/console interoperability is genuinely neat and I really like the hardware - but it's going to be a tough sell next gen for sure. They just don't seem to have any sort of plan for the future at all.
Sony putting PS4 prices UP in Japan for the second time? That's certainly a marketing strategy as the machine ages.
Concord. OOOOOF.
I hadn't even heard of Concord until just now. Another live service game shoved out to publicly wither and die.
(For anyone else in the same boat as I was three minutes ago, here's a Eurogamer article.)
I watched the launch trailer and I'm glad it's dead.
I watched the launch trailer and I'm glad it's dead.
It's odd how blind these big companies can be sometimes. Everyone knew this was going to fail, so why on earth did Sony spend eight years on it?
I watched the launch trailer and I'm glad it's dead.
😆
I'm joking of course, the whole thing is really sad. I really feel for the developers who's world has crashed in such record time. I can't imagine what such a disaster feels like for them. Hopefully it will be back in another form.
The miserable thing is that some people will blame the whole failure on the commitment to diversity that was part of the game's marketing. The worst people will say it failed because of the inclusion of pronouns. It didn't - it failed because of that awful launch trailer. I mean, it's like they said, "Chat GPT, make a dull characterless version of Guardians of the Galaxy."
I’d genuinely never even heard of it. Perhaps that’s because it’s a genre I don’t really play on a platform I don’t own, but I’m still surprised it hadn’t managed to register at all.
Part of the problem of course is that games take so long to make these days, and GaaS shooters seemed pretty neat in 2016. In 2024, not so much.
Nobody on the Soc is really a target market for this sort of thing anyway. I think one of the issues with comp shooters of any sort, is that realistically you can only engage with a couple at most as a gamer in any serious way.
For many people this will maybe be one tac shooter (CS2/Valorant etc) and one movement shooter/hero shooter (Apex/The Finals/Overwatch etc). Once you've invested serious time into any game the lure of new mechanics for new mechanics' sake doesn't tend to outweigh the sunk cost and investment in an existing title.
I do think Valve's Deadlock might stand a chance, as it's an odd mix of MOBA and hero shooter which I think is getting some really good traction - but you need a free bar of entry and sufficient content to lure people across and I just wonder how entrenched the online shooter market is now into existing pillars. I'm exactly the same, I could pick up another tac shooter, but Valorant bringing out a new hero or map is far more interesting as it's a language I already understand and something I can interact with others on a level playing field. Deadlock's massive user base this early is people panicking and getting in at the ground floor so they're not left behind. Concord didn't even have that moment.
Nintendo releasing the new trailer for the (excellent looking) new Mario Bros RPG being set in a place called Concordia of all things on this exact day was a moment I was glad to be alive for honestly. Fucking incredible.
All planned. Definitely not just poor/perfect timing coincidence. Honest.
Astro Bot seems to have lived up to expectations, judging by the reviews. And considering expectations were at new-3D-Mario levels, that's saying something.
Tomorrow can't come soon enough. Potentially my game of the generation.
The RRP is certainly a thing though.
It's in my wait for £35 range.
Why is it more egregious than any other game charging 60 quid? (Genuine question, I haven't heard any concerns about length.)
It looks like the game of the year, and it's priced at less than most other Sony first party games.
Ol' MPH over here dropping £26 and £60 like he's a money air cannon at a baseball game.
He’ll be first in line for the PS5 Pro, then, which has just been announced at £699. Without a disk drive. Or a stand. It’s nearly £825 all in if you want the set.
I think any interest I may have had just evaporated.
At €800, it's literally more than a month's rent in my previous flat. Jesus wept.
Funniest thing I've seen in ages
This is why games are still being released for the ps4
Great news. Now no bugger will buy it and they'll keep prioritising the regular PS5.
It's going to be an interesting test to see what people actually want though. Because the price point is so high, it really does split the market and I suspect the result will be that Sony quickly learns that very few people (at least in the console space) are prepared to pay such a premium for some ray tracing features and a better framerate. Like MPH says, it'll probably just drive development on the regular consoles and the current split between quality and performance modes that seem to keep most people happy.
Furthermore, assuming the Switch 2 comes out soon and as expected is an underpowered hunk of junk a modestly specced games machine, that's another differentiator and I expect it'll be very much at the expense of Sony's Pro model too.
Because the price point is so high, it really does split the market and I suspect the result will be that Sony quickly learns that very few people (at least in the console space) are prepared to pay such a premium for some ray tracing features and a better framerate.
Wait, wait… didn't they literally just learn that with both PSVR2 and the Playstation Portal? Or did I imagine both of those things?
Never seen so many people recommending getting a custom PC
Was literally anybody asking for this? Almost certainly not at this price point, at least. Surely a smaller form-factor version of the existing hardware would have been a better use of resources.
Until the price announcement I was at least passingly interested in this - I don’t have a PS5, there are several exclusives I want to play now, and I very much like shiny graphics. I bought a PS4 Pro last gen and (barring the horrendous fan noise) was generally very happy with it.
Obviously at £800 plus the cost of games they can fuck right off. My main concern is now that this normalises super-expensive consoles without disc drives, and next gen is hobbled before it even begins.
Of course there’s always a chance that it tanks completely and gets a rapid price cut, like the original Xbox or the 3DS did; but that doesn’t seem to be Sony’s style somehow.
It's a baffling price point - I know people buy iPhones and Samsung Galaxys for big moniez but the justification for those is largely around it being the device you use most of the time for a majority of your comms needs. This is a games console. £700 for a marginal performance bump, no disk drive and no other benefits I can really see (beyond the "AI" based scaling stuff, which will surely become ubiquitous across all platforms via one of a myriad of methods).
I'd assume a price cut within 3 months.
The big thing for me though. The ones without the disc drive still ain't small enough anyway. Then factoring in having an external drive bolted on and I can't help but wonder what piece of furniture this would ever neatly fit.
I've decided I'm going to get a Mart's Flat instead.
Were the shadows in your flat ray-traced though, Mart?
I've decided I'm going to get a Mart's Flat instead.
Only for a month.
Were the shadows in your flat ray-traced though, Mart?
Only for a month.
/looks at PS4 Pro special editions selling out immediately, only for a load of them to end up on eBay.
People are just the worst. Like, literally the worst. Humans were an error, let's just get the asteroid strike over with and start again.
The PS5 Pro limited edition was a thing of beauty, they should have just made that the standard design. If there had been even the slightest chance of me being able to get one, I might have been tempted, but with so few on sale it was only ever going to be a scalper’s paradise.
After another completely underwhelming game showcase (Sony this time), I feel like it's time to admit that games getting forever bigger isn't actually working. It's taking too long to create each game, and there's so much money invested that there are no AAA risks.
Without wanting to sound TOO much like Dok, I'd happily take less graphically/technologically ambitious games if it meant I actually had stuff to play. And not just 'this is a decent time filler' stuff like Sniper Elite and Far Cry 6 (my current play list).
Remember when we had 3 Fable games in one console generation? I want that back.
I've said before that Eternal Strands is a real throwback to the 360 era, and the more I play it – yes, I'm still playing it – the more it feels like a step in the right direction for games. Small(ish) team, looks great without pushing the graphical envelope, and is smart about how it's structured to allow reuse of a limited number of small (but intricate) locations, instead of going for an open world collectathon.
I didn't watch the Sony thing (partly because I forgot it was on), but I've seen the list of announcements, and yeah; nothing there to really grab me.
The first two paragraphs of Eurogamer's Avowed review couldn't be more timely.
"It took me a while to warm to Avowed. There's a feeling early on that it's all rather old-fashioned, a bit stiff and a bit wooden. It's there in the ambition of the game too: it doesn't seem to be doing anything grand or headline-grabbing. This is a big new role-playing adventure from a renowned first-party Xbox studio, but I just seem to be running around whacking lizard people. Where are the bold new ideas? Sometimes it feels like playing a game from the Xbox 360 era, albeit one with ray tracing and DLSS 3.
But as I stuck with it, that cynicism melted away, its Xbox 360-ness feeling more like a strength than a weakness. Unlike so many po-faced RPGs of today, Avowed feels blissfully unburdened by complication. It's an adventure in the warm sea air of a strange and fantastical island, and it never loses sight of that - of being an adventure. It's a game about climbing around on treasure hunts, striking out into the unknown, and revelling in the absurdity of its super-powered combat. It's a game that enjoys being a game - and I don't think we say that enough."
re: the Sony thing, outside of Sonic racing and Digimon, it was just poe-faced surly men exploring dark detailed environments, killing stuff. Why is that all AAA gaming is now? I can't be fucked with any of it.
I've said before that Eternal Strands is a real throwback to the 360 era, and the more I play it – yes, I'm still playing it – the more it feels like a step in the right direction for games.
I've only played the first half hour or so of this, but it does feel very 360 (and very specifically 360, rather than the general 360/PS3 generation). Big Kingdoms of Amalur/Fable/Kameo vibes. I need to get back to it.
re: the Sony thing, outside of Sonic racing and Digimon, it was just poe-faced surly men exploring dark detailed environments, killing stuff. Why is that all AAA gaming is now? I can't be fucked with any of it.
Same. I wonder if part of the reason I loved Astro Bot and Veilguard so much was because they were both quite optimistic games, and unafraid of a bit of high-saturation colour. Sad Men in Grey Boxes as an aesthetic can go away now, please.
A timely discussion because I've started playing No Man's Sky this week and I'm completely in love with it, partly because it isn't just Sad Men Killing Things. It's bright, it's colourful, it's totally bonkers in many ways and crucially I have no idea what's going to happen each time I boot it up.
So many games these days are fun for the first hour or two as you work out the systems and then the appeal wears off quickly once you realise you'll just be doing the same thing over and over for ten, twenty, a hundred hours. With NMS it's constantly surprising me, while also not leading me by the hand in any way whatsoever, and it reminds me of how gaming used to be: when you'd load up a cassette or stick a cartridge in the machine and expect to see something new that you'd never seen before.
I know it's not really fair to compare things in this way (NMS is, after all, the result of over a decade's constant development, which is pretty much unique for anything that isn't an MMO) but surely a bit of this kind of imagination in our AAA games isn't too much to ask for.
I was thinking about No Man's Sky too.
I've been reading up about the Sony presentation though, I think Days Gone Remastered represents some kind of nadir for the industry. Who wants this exactly?
The producer of the original game, I think. It's the games industry's version of the Snider Cut.
Was it the director or voice actor of the main character who had a tantrum because Deacon got a bot cameo in Astrobot? Not excluded, included that is.
I loved No Man's Sky at launch. I still remember that feeling when I crested that first hill on my first planet, seeing the entire world stretch out in front of me, the curve of a whole other planet, barely visible through the clouds.
But with every new expansion adding new features and systems and mechanics, it gets less and less interesting to me. The base building in particular feels at odds with the idea of exploration and discovery that I clicked with in the beginning, as it encourages/necessitates staying in one place. The multiplayer stuff undermines the sense of insignificance from being alone in an incomprehensibility huge universe. I liked that lonely vibe.
I just don't know what the point is in it, though I'm willing to admit that's a me problem. I could never get excited about sandbox creative stuff like Minecraft either. In the early days of NMS, there was an objective, of sorts: reach the centre. I'm not so interested in managing fleets and trading resources and building stuff.
I played NMS a bit at launch and got bored of it very quickly. There was really very little to do apart from jumping from planet to planet collecting resources and cataloguing stuff.
Coming back to it years later and it's like a whole new game. I don't much like sandbox creative stuff either but it hasn't felt like that at all, it's constantly throwing objectives and quests at me and I'm juggling loads of different stuff without ever feeling like I'm having to make my own fun. The base-building is there if you want it (and unlocking what seems like a million base bits to build with is a game in itself, even if you never use them) but you don't need to stay in one place at all as you can teleport to and from your base pretty much at will. And the multiplayer stuff is definitely there but the chances of running into anyone "at random" is still infinitesimally small so it's really just there if you want to team up with friends, it definitely still feels like a solo experience.
I've been putting off returning to this for years, thinking it wouldn't be my sort of thing, but it turns out it absolutely is, at least for the kind of mood I'm in right now.
You need to show me how to access the bits you're talking about, Gar, because they sound fun. I've bounced off NMS multiple times because the tutorial is all 'mine this, build that' and I get bored before I even get off the first planet.