Vidya Games Thread

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

tell me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Ubisoft looking for buyers of the company but no one made an offer? I know with all the workplace controversy and very few games maintaining their profits. It hasn't been good for them in recent years. I honestly can't think of a really good game they released in three to four years. Siege I enjoyed years ago, but it not my cup of tea anymore. Became to much superhuman with abilities.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

tell me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Ubisoft looking for buyers of the company but no one made an offer? I know with all the workplace controversy and very few games maintaining their profits. It hasn't been good for them in recent years. I honestly can't think of a really good game they released in three to four years. Siege I enjoyed years ago, but it not my cup of tea anymore. Became to much superhuman with abilities.

Yeah, there was a rumor that Ubisoft was going around to various companies about a M&A but they were getting laughed at, either because no one thought they were worth buying or because they asked for way too much money. Ubisoft is a completely different company than it was 10 years ago as they've lost a lot of talent. They had created a bunch of interesting IPs but have completely fucked them up over the years.

Spoiler: State of Ubisoft IPs

>Far Cry 3 revived the series and they repeated the same formula for every game since then, even in their non-Far Cry games. Far Cry 6 has shown that no one wants that anymore and now that IP is dead unless they shake things up. Even with getting Giancarlo Esposito to play the villain, no one cared about Far Cry 6
>Assassin's Creed has lost all of the original creators and a bunch of retards are running the show now. It is the least-dead IP purely because it has managed to make sales despite its poorly received quality
>Splinter Cell is pretty much dead after their most recent entrees, there's rumors of a remake but who knows if they're able to make a decent game
>Watch Dogs 1 and 2 were messy garbage but people somehow still enjoyed them. Legion tried to be innovative but ultimately fucked it up colossally and resulted in a shit game.
>Rainbow Six has pretty much just Siege. It was a great game but they have fucked it with updates and it has gone from a serious opsim to the weird shit it is now. They also ate the forbidden fruit of "this game is surely going to be a Esports hit and make us a gorillion dollars", so they made design decisions around that and have ruined the game. They tried to branch out by turning a co-op event into a full game and it failed miserably.
>Skull and Bones has been in development hell for a decade, so it missed the hype window to release when the audience would have automatically accepted it. It now has to be a legitimately good game for anyone to care anymore.
>The Division 2 is somehow existing and isn't dead, it even has an expansion scheduled to be released
>Xdefiant is a new Call of Duty clone they have in development that's getting hyped by CoD content creators. I haven't followed its development but it's being made by Ubisoft San Francisco (who only made the Rocksmith games and the South Park sequel Fractured But Whole), it will be a miracle if this is a hit

Like a year ago, Ubisoft pretty much announced that they're going all in on Assassin's Creed (probably because the series still exists despite the massive downturn in quality). They have Mirage coming out later this year and then like 3 other Assassin's Creeds in development. This year in general is pretty light because they only really have Mirage and Xdefiant.

 

[UberSoldat]

Yeah, there was a rumor that Ubisoft was going around to various companies about a M&A but they were getting laughed at, either because no one thought they were worth buying or because they asked for way too much money. Ubisoft is a completely different company than it was 10 years ago as they've lost a lot of talent. They had created a bunch of interesting IPs but have completely fucked them up over the years.

Spoiler: State of Ubisoft IPs

>Far Cry 3 revived the series and they repeated the same formula for every game since then, even in their non-Far Cry games. Far Cry 6 has shown that no one wants that anymore and now that IP is dead unless they shake things up. Even with getting Giancarlo Esposito to play the villain, no one cared about Far Cry 6
>Assassin's Creed has lost all of the original creators and a bunch of retards are running the show now. It is the least-dead IP purely because it has managed to make sales despite its poorly received quality
>Splinter Cell is pretty much dead after their most recent entrees, there's rumors of a remake but who knows if they're able to make a decent game
>Watch Dogs 1 and 2 were messy garbage but people somehow still enjoyed them. Legion tried to be innovative but ultimately fucked it up colossally and resulted in a shit game.
>Rainbow Six has pretty much just Siege. It was a great game but they have fucked it with updates and it has gone from a serious opsim to the weird shit it is now. They also ate the forbidden fruit of "this game is surely going to be a Esports hit and make us a gorillion dollars", so they made design decisions around that and have ruined the game. They tried to branch out by turning a co-op event into a full game and it failed miserably.
>Skull and Bones has been in development hell for a decade, so it missed the hype window to release when the audience would have automatically accepted it. It now has to be a legitimately good game for anyone to care anymore.
>The Division 2 is somehow existing and isn't dead, it even has an expansion scheduled to be released
>Xdefiant is a new Call of Duty clone they have in development that's getting hyped by CoD content creators. I haven't followed its development but it's being made by Ubisoft San Francisco (who only made the Rocksmith games and the South Park sequel Fractured But Whole), it will be a miracle if this is a hit

Like a year ago, Ubisoft pretty much announced that they're going all in on Assassin's Creed (probably because the series still exists despite the massive downturn in quality). They have Mirage coming out later this year and then like 3 other Assassin's Creeds in development. This year in general is pretty light because they only really have Mirage and Xdefiant.

Beyond Good and Evil 2, who knows when that will come out at this stage.

 

[yuckyyaki]

Beyond Good and Evil 2, who knows when that will come out at this stage.

I heard that it's co-releasing with the new Rayman game.

 

[Punished Anime Discusser]

Yeah, there was a rumor that Ubisoft was going around to various companies about a M&A but they were getting laughed at, either because no one thought they were worth buying or because they asked for way too much money. Ubisoft is a completely different company than it was 10 years ago as they've lost a lot of talent. They had created a bunch of interesting IPs but have completely fucked them up over the years.

Spoiler: State of Ubisoft IPs

>Far Cry 3 revived the series and they repeated the same formula for every game since then, even in their non-Far Cry games. Far Cry 6 has shown that no one wants that anymore and now that IP is dead unless they shake things up. Even with getting Giancarlo Esposito to play the villain, no one cared about Far Cry 6
>Assassin's Creed has lost all of the original creators and a bunch of retards are running the show now. It is the least-dead IP purely because it has managed to make sales despite its poorly received quality
>Splinter Cell is pretty much dead after their most recent entrees, there's rumors of a remake but who knows if they're able to make a decent game
>Watch Dogs 1 and 2 were messy garbage but people somehow still enjoyed them. Legion tried to be innovative but ultimately fucked it up colossally and resulted in a shit game.
>Rainbow Six has pretty much just Siege. It was a great game but they have fucked it with updates and it has gone from a serious opsim to the weird shit it is now. They also ate the forbidden fruit of "this game is surely going to be a Esports hit and make us a gorillion dollars", so they made design decisions around that and have ruined the game. They tried to branch out by turning a co-op event into a full game and it failed miserably.
>Skull and Bones has been in development hell for a decade, so it missed the hype window to release when the audience would have automatically accepted it. It now has to be a legitimately good game for anyone to care anymore.
>The Division 2 is somehow existing and isn't dead, it even has an expansion scheduled to be released
>Xdefiant is a new Call of Duty clone they have in development that's getting hyped by CoD content creators. I haven't followed its development but it's being made by Ubisoft San Francisco (who only made the Rocksmith games and the South Park sequel Fractured But Whole), it will be a miracle if this is a hit

Like a year ago, Ubisoft pretty much announced that they're going all in on Assassin's Creed (probably because the series still exists despite the massive downturn in quality). They have Mirage coming out later this year and then like 3 other Assassin's Creeds in development. This year in general is pretty light because they only really have Mirage and Xdefiant.

Splinter Cell remake is confirmed if I remember right.

Also remember Prince of Persia? That remake of Sands of Time that was supposed to be out like 3 years ago, but looked worse than the PS2 game? Yeah, me neither. Apparently development on that has been completely restarted for the third time.

 

[UberSoldat]

Splinter Cell remake is confirmed if I remember right.

Also remember Prince of Persia? That remake of Sands of Time that was supposed to be out like 3 years ago, but looked worse than the PS2 game? Yeah, me neither. Apparently development on that has been completely restarted for the third time.

More info:

https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-prince-of-persia-sands-of-time-remake-delayed-2516680/

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

Splinter Cell remake is confirmed if I remember right.

Also remember Prince of Persia? That remake of Sands of Time that was supposed to be out like 3 years ago, but looked worse than the PS2 game? Yeah, me neither. Apparently development on that has been completely restarted for the third time.

More info:

https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-prince-of-persia-sands-of-time-remake-delayed-2516680/

>let Pajeets handle the development of Prince of Persia
Wow, that explains so much

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

Double posting because this is a completely different topic. Sony fucked up massively during the FTC trial and submitted some documents as part of the FTC's lawsuit. The major issue with this document was that it was poorly redacted, so Sony just revealed to everyone that The Last of Us Part 2 cost $220 million to make and Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million.

This didn't even include marketing costs, which wasn't revealed, but the document did note that the marketing costs for it were large, even for established franchises. Keep in mind that GTA5 cost ~165 million with a ~100 million marketing cost. So we're likely looking at a ~320 million+ hole that The Last of Us Part 2 dug. Unless that game ended up selling 15 million copies at full price, that's not good for them. Even more hilarious when you look back at Druckman stating that the game made a profit within 1 day of sales, which was 4 million copies from the entire opening weekend. Fun fact, the people that make the game don't get the full $60 price at stores and even if they did make $60 off every copy of that 4 million, that would still only be $240 million in revenue. Considering the game saw a massive decline in sales, it saw a price cut everywhere, and it took them 2 years to finally reach 10 million copies, that's really fucking bad.

Brought this up because the composer for the series may have just accidentally leaked that a remaster of The Last of Us Part 2 is in the works. Yes you heard that right, a remake of a game that came out in 2020 is on the way. They are really desperate to make back that investment after The Last of Us 1 remake flopped really fucking hard.

Also some side info from their failure at redaction

Spoiler: Oops, that was meant to be redacted

>In 2021, over 1 million PS players only played Call of Duty and nothing else. 6 million spent 70% of their time playing Call of Duty
>CoD is the biggest 3rd-party franchise for SIE, which made $873 million in the United States for them in 2021
>PS users that play CoD generated an annual platform spending of around $15.9 billion worldwide from 2019-2021
>Modern Warfare 2 (2022) sold 4.4 million units on Playstation in its first week
>Less than 20% of PS5 owners also own an Xbox Series X/S. Almost half of PS5 owners also own a Nintendo Switch
>34% of SIE's revenue comes from the sale of PS consoles and accessories
>Both Sony and Microsoft made bids for Valheim and Immortality to have on their subscription services, Microsoft won both bids

 

[Punished Anime Discusser]

The Last of Us Part 2 cost $220 million to make and Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million.

Jesus fucking Christ, there's no way in hell those are turning a profit. GTAV probably took a year if not more to recoup the budget and marketing costs, and that's considering the fact that GTAV was the global bestseller for a year straight on Xbox and PS3, plus GTA Online making boatloads even in the early days.

TLOU/Horizon don't have any kind of multiplayer microtransaction hell to keep jewing, TLOU2 didn't even have any post-release DLC to milk a bit more. Sony also bet fucking MASSIVE on Death Stranding, and that game didn't sell that well either.

Has to be the DEI gibs keeping Sony in general profitable at this point, because I remember reading that their music label is eating shit, and so is their general consumer electronics department.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

Jesus fucking Christ, there's no way in hell those are turning a profit. GTAV probably took a year if not more to recoup the budget and marketing costs, and that's considering the fact that GTAV was the global bestseller for a year straight on Xbox and PS3, plus GTA Online making boatloads even in the early days.

TLOU/Horizon don't have any kind of multiplayer microtransaction hell to keep jewing, TLOU2 didn't even have any post-release DLC to milk a bit more. Sony also bet fucking MASSIVE on Death Stranding, and that game didn't sell that well either.

Has to be the DEI gibs keeping Sony in general profitable at this point, because I remember reading that their music label is eating shit, and so is their general consumer electronics department.

Considering the FTC has shown that Sony makes nearly twice the revenue from consoles sales than their 1st party exclusives, that actually shows people aren't even buying many of the Sony exclusives. From a flat rate view, the PS5 is $500 and a 1st party exclusive is usually $60. Ignoring all the other CoGS, that means it takes ~8 exclusive sales to match a console sale. Of course it's going to take a while for a console sale to be surpassed from exclusives sales but that's really bad. Keep in mind that there's something like 16 exclusives. So people are buying a playstation because everyone is going playstation and because Xbox has practically nothing in exclusives. Then people might buy 3 or so exclusives but then they'll fuck off and play all the 3rd party games like CoD, GTA, Fortnite, Apex, FIFA, Fall Guys, or even Overwatch 2.

For example, here's the most played PS5 and PS4 games of 2022:

Spoiler: Most Played in 2022

[source]
And here's a list with only the Sony-exclusives, with the 2022 releases in bold and in italics

Spoiler: Sony exclusives

Ghost of Tsushima is their most popular game and the only game they had that managed to break into the top 10 most played for 2022 on their platforms. Meanwhile The Last of Us Remastered was played more than The Last of Us Part 2. Horizon Forbidden West, a game that released in 2022, only managed to reach 18th. The only sales figures we've got on TLOU2 and HFW is 10 million and 8.4 million respectively. These games likely lost money, their whole purpose was to get people onto a Playstation console. It's probably why we won't see a PC port for Ghost of Tsushima for a few more years, it's their most played game and they're using it to get people onto the Playstation platform.

FUCKING HOT WHEELS UNLEASHED WAS MORE PLAYED THAN THE LAST OF US PART TWO.

EDIT: Apparently the list didn't include it but Death Stranding was 58th

 

[Zizara]

For all intents and purposes, corporate is right in these regards - give people a choice between Male and Female for content value, but the numbers all the way back to things like Mass Effect show that people overwhelmingly choose the Male character when given the opportunity, but that doesn't stop Bioware from trying to make FemShep the "iconic" and "popular" choice

These developers are not able to force people to change their behavior without just simply not giving them the choice in the first place, hence why they have been trying for ages to never have a Male player character again - and it's not even hyperbole when these same developers will gladly tour on interviews and social media posts over the years saying this exact thing

So deflections are most likely going to be, as always:

"Why do you hate womxn?"
"Why do you hate black people?"
"Actually, there were female samurai and Africans in feudal Japan in these specific circumstances, so it's historically accurate, bigot"
"...And if it's not, it's a video game, it's not meant to be real life, touch grass"

Ubisoft would never make a game about African history or mythology and have it star a Japanese Male immigrant - in fact, they would never make a game about African history or mythology period, they would almost immediately be eaten by their own for the slightest of slights or portrayals of anything not up to modern-day standards.

It reminds me of when BG3 released and the devs did an article seething about how the average PC was a white human male cleric. Small mask off moment, it really is only a tiny fraction of the community who are invested in and pushing the representation shit.
BG3 DEVPOST

 

[ogey_rrat]

Ghost of Tsushima is really the only western developed game I know that respected Japanese history/culture in some fashion.

Shogun 1 and 2 did a good job. Fall of the Samurai in 2 did veer into alt-history territory by making the Boshin War a more significant and drawn out conflict than it actuall was, with greater Western participation, but it still felt authentic.

Oda Nobunaga literally had a black guy as one of his retainers, Yasuke, and his life is pretty well documented, but I'm sure you won't be playing as him, instead you'll be playing as a woman samurai (facemodelled/acted by a Chinese woman) and Jamal Tyrone the ninjgga.

Yeah, Nioh's protagonist was based on William Adams so it wouldn't have been that unusual. There were also onna bugeisha but I don't think they were that common. It really does feel like the devs just wanted to meet some diversity quota and are going to use the fact that Yasuke and a small amount of female samurai lived during this period to back it up. I don't think their devs do much research beyond reading Wikipedia articles as shown by some of their previous releases, so one of them probably read Yasuke's wiki article, thought that was cool and then decided that they were going to make their own black ninja OC protagonist instead.

Not like it matters though, if Ghost of Tsushima gets a good PC port this game will probably be dead on arrival. Ubisoft missed their chance years ago.

 

[Punished Anime Discusser]

It reminds me of when BG3 released and the devs did an article seething about how the average PC was a white human male cleric. Small mask off moment, it really is only a tiny fraction of the community who are invested in and pushing the representation shit.
BG3 DEVPOST

 

[That Chuuba Enjoyer]

It is funny that people stick to a general style of a character when given options, but I think it's good that developers at least gives options instead of forcing players into one character. Unless it's meant for the story and stuff.

---

I got BG3 a little while ago, and I kind of been enjoying it. really love the animations and emotions characters have in dialogue. Doesn't do the emotionless default face animations Bethesda/Bioware games do. A lot of options in how to do quests or events as well. I'm still iffy about D&D 5th edition combat mechanics, but combat is still good. like having duo hand crossbows and running around the map. It is well worth the price of $60, especially since we only got to play 1/3 of the game in early access and put dozen of hours into it already.

Maybe I'll do half-orc wizard at full release, so I get discriminated against and comments about how weird my class/race combo is from npcs.

EDIT:
Tenma playing it at full release is going to be funny again. She'll probably fumble it with Astarion as well.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

So turns out the deal that Sony got from Microsoft ended up being worse now after all their retarded antics. The deal now only includes access to Call of Duty for 10 years with the same features between Xbox, Playstation, PC, and Nintendo with same day releases of updates. This new deal doesn't include any other Activision Blizzard game, the original deal was suppose to include a bunch more games. Nice job, Sony. How Jim Ryan has a job after this whole shitshow is beyond me.

 

[The Holiest Hole]

I got a few roleplay ideas I want to do for BG3.
A half-orc monk that tries to redeem his race but eventually succumbs to the parasite and multiclasses back to barbarian(can't decide if this'll be the dark urge or not).
A dwarven druid simp who will neg all the male party members but yesman to all women.
I also want to do a playthrough of a travelling troupe that got kidnapped by the mindflayers so it'll be a 4man custom party of bards.

I hope BG3 will be able to hold my interest for multiple playthroughs. I'm a one and done type of player most of the time but I really want to try multiple types of playstyles for this game.

 

[Thomas Talus]

A half-orc monk that tries to redeem his race but eventually succumbs to the parasite and multiclasses back to barbarian(can't decide if this'll be the dark urge or not).

And his name shall be... Zug Zug.

 

[God's Strongest Dragoon]

So more hilarity from the merger. After Phil Spencer (Xbox) first tried to enter negotiations with Jim Ryan (Sony) about the planned merger, Jim Ryan sent a response email where they tried to pull a fucking Nintendo Playstation on Microsoft.

Spoiler: Email from Jim Ryan

TLDR of the email
>Hey, we saw you spend all that money for Activision Blizzard. You should give us all of those games and make them equal, so same day updates/content.
>Know how you've been spending a bunch of money to get exclusive subscription service rights to a bunch of games? You should share and let us put that all on PS+.
>Oh, and you should do the same with Bethesda and let us have everything from them too. Don't mind the fact we were in negotiations to make Starfield a PS exclusive right before you bought Bethesda
Phil Spencer told him to fuck off and Jim Ryan ran off to every regulatory body he could to get the merger blocked and failed. So now fag Ryan is going to have to explain to a bunch of old Japanese men how he colossally fucked everything up.

Meanwhile Nintendo and Gabe supposedly secured a deal for Activision Blizzard games with Microsoft during this whole shitshow. So Nintendo did absolutely nothing and they're going to get CoD, a bunch of Activision Blizzard games, and supposedly some Bethesda games too. The Switch 2 console is unironically going to be a big problem for Sony now.

 

[El Rrata]

Sony's a joke. Like the entire company. The only reason they still exist is because of Playstation and the only reason the Playstation does well is because of brand-recognition and MS fumbled the foothold in Japan so hard.

The Switch 2 console is unironically going to be a big problem for Sony now.

I wouldn't go that far. As big a joke Sony is, Nintendo is a far-bigger one. I'd be surprised if the Switch 2 was any better than the Deck in terms of performance and there is no way they will ever fix their abysmal netcode.

 

[That Guy Over There]

I wouldn't go that far. As big a joke Sony is, Nintendo is a far-bigger one. I'd be surprised if the Switch 2 was any better than the Deck in terms of performance and there is no way they will ever fix their abysmal netcode.

I will say that the rumors for the switch 2 is at least ps4/xbone levels of power, so they could get some good games out of that.
Or at least they can so long as they stop letting gamefreak slack off on the job for pokemon. But at least the Zelda on that system will be good.