Vidya Games Thread

[MrProcessor]

Cute girl playing a cute game.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

The announcement of the Switch was March 2015 as they stated but it didn't release until 2 years later in March 2017. Supposedly the Switch 2/Super Switch is suppose to come out early/mid 2025, so that's a much shorter cadence between announcement and release.

 

[Saturnus]

The announcement of the Switch was March 2015 as they stated but it didn't release until 2 years later in March 2017. Supposedly the Switch 2/Super Switch is suppose to come out early/mid 2025, so that's a much shorter cadence between announcement and release.

To be fair, The Wii U's (lack of) performance at the time more or less forced Nintendo's hand in annoucing the Switch (NX) really early. The Wii U only had a few games keeping it afloat during 2015 (Mario Kart 8 (+ DLC), Smash 4 (+ DLC), and the recent breakout successes during that year which were Mario Maker & Splatoon).

They've never had that problem with the Switch and it has only started to feel like the train has been slowing down this last year with the lack of General Directs (the last General Nintendo Direct was in the fall 2023 iirc) for new titles.

 

[John Vtuber👁️]

not to be outdone by the Nintendo Switch 2 hype, Microsoft cuts even more studios, no Redfall DLC for any of the 12 people that pre-ordered it:

 

[UberSoldat]

not to be outdone by the Nintendo Switch 2 hype, Microsoft cuts even more studios, no Redfall DLC for any of the 12 people that pre-ordered it:

Aren't acquisitions great for the industry?

 

[Bronze]

Timing couldn't be better

 

[agility_]

What a bloated disastrous carcass of a monolithic company. They haven't released one worthwhile fucking product since the "fixed" slim xbox 360 models. The market force truly does not work as a driving motivator when you have a cornered monopoly on services. That asshole steve jobs was right, as soon as you have your monopoly set, the only people who will get promoted are sales and marketing, nobody from product R&D can make a dent on the quarterly bottom line.

 

[Abomination]

Coincidentally, Hi-Fi Rush is available in the Humble monthly line-up.

So many things Microsoft touches dies. Unless I want a studio to fail for some reason, I never see a Microsoft acquisition as a good thing. I say this as someone who loved Rare games as a kid.

 

[Xuhle]

Coincidentally, Hi-Fi Rush is available in the Humble monthly line-up.

So many things Microsoft touches dies. Unless I want a studio to fail for some reason, I never see a Microsoft acquisition as a good thing. I say this as someone who loved Rare games as a kid.

Activision blizzard fired Bobby due to the Microsoft acquisition.

 

[Abomination]

Activision blizzard fired Bobby due to the Microsoft acquisition.

That one is probably the closest to me not caring if a studio fails.

But even still, Bobby gets away with a fuckload of money while Activision Blizzard will continue putting out shit.

 

[Brosnan Pierce Brosnan]

Microsoft since the Kinect has been a disaster. They lost all forward momentum and their pseudo hands off approach has led to no games being made.

If I would look at the last two gens of games that I would call "good" being published by MS there is like what Ryse, which itself was the classic rental esque console showcase and not much more than that. And Killer Instinct after it was "complete"?

Gears of War 4 was basically a mish mash of the prior 4 Gears of War games except worse, no reason for it to exist. Gears 5 got good at the very end of the campaign, so like 10 percent of the game was good while the MP was terrible so it had no reason to exist. Gears Tactics was decent I guess from what I played. Halo MCC was a disaster and I'd still argue that it isn't as solid as the OG Halo 2, 3 and Reach releases despite a ton of fixes. Dead Rising 3 was OK, but again it took what the first two games did and came out with a game that simply wasn't as good.

Fucking Halo 5 was a disaster. Halo Infinite was a disaster.

Project Spark was cool but it got shut down. Rare Replay was cool but thats a compilation. I know there are others that I'm not real familiar with like Halo Wars 2 and the Forza games. But shit thats 10 years of mediocrity. On the horizon we allegedly have a shit Fable game, a probable shit Perfect Dark that will come out when Metroid Prime 4 comes out. And Hellblade 2 which thank god Tango got killed so we can get what will probably be a Sony esque walking sim.

Just compare this to the launch of the 360. It had great exclusives like Condemed, PGR3, Amped 3 and COD 2. It had decent outings with Kameo and Dead Or Alive 4. And it had mediocre ones like Perfect Dark Zero. But all of that was over a couple of months. All the mediocrity above has been over TEN YEARS. And that was one month, don't get me started on the onslought of 2007.

It seems like Hi-Fi rush was well received, but I'd almost guess that Tango was closed because it was Japanese. Kind of like how Sony jettisoned their Japanese development.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

That one is probably the closest to me not caring if a studio fails.

But even still, Bobby gets away with a fuckload of money while Activision Blizzard will continue putting out shit.

Just a reminder that Bobby Kotick bought Activision for $500,000 in 1991 and then sold Activision Blizzard to Microsoft for $68.7 billion in 2023. Business schools are going to be teaching about that Epstein frequent flyer for years to come as a success story.

 

[reinigen]

Microsoft since the Kinect has been a disaster. They lost all forward momentum and their pseudo hands off approach has led to no games being made.

I'd go further and say both Sony and Microsoft have been crashing since they decided the direction for their console is the "all-in-one living room entertainment box", rather than a fucking video game console. Microsoft was just spiking into the ground at a much faster pace.

Meanwhile Nintendo is out here thriving because they haven't forgot people just want to play goddamn video games.

And after the announcement the Switch 2 is on the horizon today, and with it confirmed it's fully backwards compatible, I expect the gulf between Nintendo and the other two to keep widening.

 

[John Vtuber👁️]

I'd go further and say both Sony and Microsoft have been crashing since they decided the direction for their console is the "all-in-one living room entertainment box", rather than a fucking video game console. Microsoft was just spiking into the ground at a much faster pace.

Meanwhile Nintendo is out here thriving because they haven't forgot people just want to play goddamn video games.

And after the announcement the Switch 2 is on the horizon today, and with it confirmed it's fully backwards compatible, I expect the gulf between Nintendo and the other two to keep widening.

oh yeah, Switch + PC seems to be the way to go for anyone even remotely interested in gaming, since PlayStation games will eventually come to PC, and Microsoft has

and if the Switch 2 is at least as powerful as a PS4, any studio that ports their old catalogue to it within the first year of release will see a sales influx like nothing else

 

[Brosnan Pierce Brosnan]

How does everything managed to become even more and more fucked

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

I'd go further and say both Sony and Microsoft have been crashing since they decided the direction for their console is the "all-in-one living room entertainment box", rather than a fucking video game console. Microsoft was just spiking into the ground at a much faster pace.

Meanwhile Nintendo is out here thriving because they haven't forgot people just want to play goddamn video games.

And after the announcement the Switch 2 is on the horizon today, and with it confirmed it's fully backwards compatible, I expect the gulf between Nintendo and the other two to keep widening.

It's pretty amazing how abysmal the software sales have been. Sony's best selling exclusive is Spider-Man 2, which hit 10 million copies a few months ago. With ~50 million PS5 consoles "sold" (sell through is a fun term), that means that their best exclusive can barely push a 20% acceptance rate on their base. This is an absolutely horrid ratio, especially if you look at historical best-selling software/console sales like Halo 3 on the Xbox 360 or Super Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64. Even the Nintendo Switch, which has sold a staggering 140 million consoles, has multiple software titles that sold more than a 20% ratio, which is 28 million units.

Smash Ultimate = 34 million (24%)
Animal Crossing = 45 million (32%)
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe = 62 million (44%)

How about the rest of the PS5 exclusives? The only data we have on FF16 is that it sold 3 million units in its first week. According to the Insomniac leak, Demon's Souls sold 1.8 million units and Returnal only sold 866k units. What about their big selling titles like Ragnarok or Horizon Forbidden West, which sold 15 million units and 8.4 million units respectively? Those were multi-plat with the PS4, so that's another 117 million consoles to compare against (granted some of the PS5 already had a PS4). So if we just look at the PS4 for those 2 games, that's a 12.8% and a 7.2% acceptance rate.

Even with ridiculous development budgets, the PS5's exclusives are not selling well, hence why they've been porting to PC and trying to get the PC crowd onto PSN. The Playstation and Xbox are largely being used as a streaming box for Netflix/HBOMax while they can play their normiecore like Call of Duty or FIFA. People that actually want to play games are doing it on PC or the Switch at this point. This situation is going to look even worse for Sony when the PS6 comes out because that's when the Call of Duty deal ends and they're going to lose some people because of that.

Microsoft and Sony have killed their consoles and that's why they've been making moves to leech off the PC market. We already know Microsoft's gameplan is GamePass on the PC but it definitely feels like Sony was trying to boil the frog and get people onto the PSN network so they can force them to pay for PSN+ down the line.

 

[Shaken]

I don't see a scenario where Xbox continues after next gen if they make it that far.

 

[MrProcessor]

Here's a pretty good summary that I've found about "What is going on with Xbox division at Microsoft?"

"Why Xbox Abandoning The Traditional Console Business Model, Makes Business Sense"
https://icon-era.com/threads/why-xb...ole-business-model-makes-business-sense.9576/

It's a pretty long read, but it is interesting. It talks about a lot of things, including the Xbox 360 era and the Xbox divisions original goals visa-vi Sony and Nintendo.

 

[Willemshaven]

All the talk about Xbox reminded me of this video analyzing the Xbox FTC leak. Mainly about Game Pass growth.

 

[Lee Crabb]

More Dayz. This time, I decide to do a bit of trolling in a high population server.
All I need a car battery and not get shot while running to the capital, Chernogorsk. My goal is the police station in the center of the city.

As I get closer I hear a pack of wolves, which are a lot more dangerous than zombies because their attacks are more likely to cause you to start bleeding and if they headshot its a one hit kill.

Almost there!


Now what's so special about this building? On the top floor there's a PA console thats linked upto 150 different loudspeakers spread throughout the entire city and suburbs. Once its powered up with a car battery it will blast whatever I want in whats essentially a high PVP arena

Spoiler: Tonight's playlist