The Embracer CEO was happy they made more the Marketing Budget, so at least it was only a Loss and not a Crater of Financial Ruin. Internal play testing would have told them it was going to do badly. If we remember the Phil Spencer apology/angry tour after Redfall, it was because something serious had broken down in their internal play testing system and he had to get egg on his face for it.
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Vidya Games Thread
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The Embracer CEO was happy they made more the Marketing Budget, so at least it was only a Loss and not a Crater of Financial Ruin. Internal play testing would have told them it was going to do badly. If we remember the Phil Spencer apology/angry tour after Redfall, it was because something serious had broken down in their internal play testing system and he had to get egg on his face for it.
Whenever I hear some suit claim that their obviously shit game was a huge financial success despite all the signs pointing to otherwise, I just think back to that fag Druckmann and The Last of Us 2. When everyone was clowning on the game, he tried to claim to his cultists that the game was profitable day 1. Fast forward to a few years later and Sony's lawyers fuck up redacting info in the FTC lawsuit like a bunch of retards., revealing that the budget for the game was $220 million. As the game sold 4 million copies during the OPENING WEEKEND, it was impossible for it to be profitable day 1, especially since that budget didn't include the marketing budget and the documents stated that they were movie-level expensive (ie $100 mil at the bare minimum).
These fags aren't worth listening to unless they give literal solid numbers because it's all just a game to avoid pissing off investors. It's actually why I was happy to hear Spencer to come out and just straight tear into Redfall instead of trying to play some gay "well it was actually doing quite well!" routine.
Too much of the commentary around the Angry Phil interview was so dumb. Just so dumb. A VP of Microsoft has *criminal* liability for things they say publicly about the company. (It's rare, but actual charges do happen occasionally.) He was telling us so much about the internal systems, communication failures and issues around not getting deeper information about games in the pipeline from studios they've acquired. He also stated the obvious about the market and the fact that the Xbox One's E3 Press Conference lost them both last and current Gen. It was the most in-depth, insider information we'll ever see that isn't a leak and the moron patrols couldn't gronk it. But it was nice to confirm much of Xbox's entire strategy. I think I pointed it out back at the X/S launch to someone and everyone in the gaming forum thread disagreed. (I thought it was pretty obvious the play.)
As for Sony's marketing budget, I think it was Troy Baker on a podcast that talked about when Sony moves games around that if you end up as the "big game" that year, solo, you get all of the marketing budget. I think it was in reference to Bend Studios' Days Gone he was talking about. While the game sold well enough for its budget, it was the fact the Marketing Budget almost doubled how much they had to recoup. That's a lot of the reason the game isn't getting a sequel. And Days Gone cleared 8 million copies. I honestly do think TLOU2 was "profitable", even after Marketing and probably was at Production Budget break even after the first weekend. But Sony was also expecting a smash hit, which they didn't turn in, but the name branding was so strong that it carried it to the limbo space of "just good enough everyone isn't getting fired". But Sony likely sold consoles off the back of that, which sold more copies of COD, Madden and FIFA, which they care about more.
Bingo, everything about the FTC trial showed how much Sony's "song and dance" that their big blockbuster games are selling a gorillion dollars is a lie. A lot of the times they'll slowly make back their money with these huge games but that isn't the point. The point of those games is to attract normies to their platform. So when those normies finish that shitty 20 hour Sony cutscene game and go back to spending 90% of their playtime playing COD, Madden, or FIFA, they're doing it on the playstation platform and Sony can suckle at that teet of those enormous microtransaction machines. That's where the money is and they fucking know it. Having a big name game go in the red by $50 million is nothing compared to the colossal windfall they get from their cut of the new CoD Warzone DLC that comes out that month.
TLOU2 likely made back their budget, maybe even their marketing budget too, but it's as you said. It was just about bringing people to their platform. That's the whole concept of loss leaders.
Yup, Sony sells Consoles to make money off Microtransaction fees. (Side note: Google Stadia could have made BANK doing this, but they were far, far too dumb to understand that.) The same as the Apple, Android and Samsung stores. And those "Big Sony Games" do move consoles, which is why they have bundles available. But they also give them a specific reason to market Sony Playstation to the tune of 100s of millions in the direct market. It makes the ad spend far more effective.
It's actually a good synergy cycle. Though the Big Sony Game is getting surprisingly formulaic. Mostly because they're Blockbuster Movie Budgets and they aren't really willing to take gameplay risks with them. Plus Game Journalists love them.
That does remind me: where is Gears of War 6?
I am
Impressed he didn't delete the tweets, tbh
A highly accurate summary of how my latest Factorio addiction is going.
Boss, get it that running a vtuber forum should be enough, but have you thought about getting an autism diagnosis
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It's Fallout in Space with better shooting mechanics. If you're in for a Bethesda game, you're in for it.
Seems generally quite positive.
That said, it isn't quite the "95 out of 100, go buy it now", but I don't know if a new IP from Bethesda could pull that off after Fallout 76.
The only thing I would ever trust 'professional' critics opinions on is how much dick you could stuff in your mouth.
We're only a couple of more years from being able to actually take them seriously again. Almost all of the websites are broke.
I'm probably going to wait until it goes on sale in the future before I buy it. It definitely feels like Bethesda bite off way more than they can chew. From what I've seen, the game isn't bad but it just feels woefully inadequate for its pricetag, especially when many of its features are compared to other games. The whole major point is that it tries to do a lot of different things that other games have done but it doesn't hit the mark, so it doesn't even feel like a "Jack of All Trades" but more of a "Barely Competent At Everything". The "Skyrim/Fallout in Space" is very applicable, if you were expecting that but with less freedom in exploration, you'll be fine. Quite a few streamers I've watched weren't really enjoying it but after like 5+ hours, something clicks and they enjoy it but they can't say why. It's that classic Bethesda feeling of "Why the fuck am I enjoying this shit? There should be no reason why I have 80+ hours into this game but I do." It's like the game is the definition of a guilty pleasure, where they know how much of the game is not up to par but it just works and they're hooked and having fun.
For the past two days, I've constantly had a stream of someone playing it in the background, so I've seen like 15+ people play it (both IRL and vtubers) and what I've gathered is this:
- Exploration: Majority of the bad reviews are coming from the fact that there is no real exploration, as you fast travel from place to place. They don't even do the Jedi Survivor trick of making the ship's screen enter hyperspace while you can do whatever, it's just straight into a short cutscene. It's why this game listed SSD as a mandatory requirement under its specs. You go to a city/station, get a quest, you fast travel your ship to orbit around where you were, you fast travel to the orbit of where you need to go, and then you fast travel when landing. The whole concept of "seamless open world" is nonexistent. The whole Bethesda RPG feeling of going off into a random direction and finding some cool shit is dead in this game because when you land on a planet, they draw a big boundary of ~30min of walking and the only thing that really matters is what they set out for you in that specific direction. Instead of letting you run around a giant sandbox, you're now in a fishtank and you just get asked to move to different fishtanks in a room when you're done doing your tasks in that fishtank.
- Environment: The whole "1000 planets" thing ended up just like everyone expected and the procedural generation isn't that unique. I've seen streamers run into the same location/facility that has the same layout and NPC placement on different planets. People have always complained about this with other procedurally generated space games like No Man's Sky but the problem for Starfield is that environmental storytelling has always been the one thing everyone praises Bethesda for despite their retardation in all other aspects of game development. What I mean by this, is that you could visit a cave or house in their games and the environmental storytelling is what grips you as you figure out what happened here. There was a sense of care players could feel from this stuff. Procedural generation of locations kills this as you'll see something and think "woah, that's cool" and then you see it like 6 more times. These first two points I listed are the two points everyone has always praised Bethesda for but for Starfield, they abandoned their two greatest strengths for mediocre replacements.
- Gunplay: They weren't joking that the gunplay is the best in the series because from everything I've seen, it definitely is. It is a huge step forward compared to previous Fallout games. However in this case, having the "best gunplay ever in a Bethesda game" is like being the smartest kid on the short bus. If you don't play other FPS games, it will be fine. If you have played any other FPS that has come out in the past 10 years, you'll realize that they're still lightyears behind. This is just like how when Skyrim came out with its horribly outdated combat system. People casually accepted Skyrim's combat because the general Western audience doesn't play a lot of RPGs with better combat. The problem with Starfield is that shooters are one of the most prominent genres in Western gaming so the general Western audience has most likely played a game that has better combat to compare to.
- Ships and Space Combat: One of the few positives I've seen is that people enjoy the customization of ship creation. However the major problem is that the ship custom builds only really serve a purpose of giving you stats like "bigger inventory slots" and while they buff you in space combat, space combat is routinely noted as being shitty. Space combat's only saving grace is the "Fallout VATS" system where you can target specific sections of a ship, like shooting out their engines so they're easier to board. However these features are limited and do not solely make the space combat fun. It feels like you're on a camera dolly while enemy ships move around you instead of you being able to maneuver around in space.
- Storytelling: I've heard some claim that the main story is phenomenal but I've watched about a dozen people struggle to stay awake for this stuff and it is mandatory to progress through it a certain extend to access certain gameplay systems. This is one of the few cases where a recent game actually makes this worse because Baldur's Gate 3 had significantly better dialogue, NPC facial expressions, and NPC movements when you were chatting. None of that is here, it just feels monotone and the characters came straight from the uncanny valley. Again, I've heard some people enjoy certain story quests but those people I've talked to have no-life'd the game until they're way further into the game. So either the first dozen hours is filled with the worst quests and stories in the game while it gets better later on or the people I've talked to suffer from a massive sunken cost fallacy mindset. I've been told the game really picks up and becomes super interesting by the time you get to the city of Neon but that's like 5-10+ hours in from what I've heard.
- AI: Yup, it's Bethesda AI and it has never progressed, it has actually gotten worse. Enemies will constantly look at you and wait several seconds before shooting a few shots, they hardly react to damage or any threats, they don't use the environment as you pop in and out of cover to take shots, and the AI will often just break. One of the best examples I saw was a streamer fighting a melee enemy on a low gravity planet, so he could jump super high. He'd shoot at the enemy but once he jumped into the air, the AI broke because it no longer had a path to hit the player and it just stood still while the player slowly floated back to the ground. Once the player touched the ground again, the AI then resumed combat but the player immediately jumped again and the AI stopped. They didn't implement the bare necessity of allowing AI to anticipate player positioning/trajectory in the pathfinding. The AI wouldn't be so bad if it weren't so effortlessly easy to break it. Every single stream I've watched, the AI completely breaks itself and the streamer stops to take note of the completely retarded AI.
- Bugs: Everyone was anticipating that there would be bugs because it's a Bethesda game but I heard that this game was surprisingly better. I will say I've seen far less bugs than I expected but some of the bugs that I have seen are far worse. I saw a quest NPC casually float through the wall and disappear into space as a space station was maintaining orbit because the game broke and stopped factoring that in with the NPC's placement. That quest is now bricked as you can't talk to that NPC as it is chilling in the cold vacuum of space. The classic Bethesda bugs break immersion but at least they're amusing and don't break the game, so everyone is fine with that. So even though Starfield's bugs are far less prevalent than any other Bethesda game at launch, there's quite a few bugs in Starfield that straight up break the game entirely, which makes this worse.
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Holy shit, Matsuri is absolute dogshit. I'd honestly rather play Zeta again than Matsuri.
I didn't even use her ever since she released she was that clunky
I'm beating the first level with all of the girls. Figure it's the best way to find out which ones I like and which ones I don't. Right now, I'm thinking that IRyS is my favorite.
Edit: Aki was pretty good, though I don't like that you don't have control over your main weapon. Subaru's decent, though there are better ranged attackers. Choco is average. Only nine more to go (I've already tried out Kaela and Ollie).
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I can't believe Todd made Elite 3 but dogshit, and 28 years after Elite 3. And almost ten years after Elite 4. And like 15 years after the space sim boom of the 2000s.
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