Gaming News

EoinHef

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Same place they get the servers for PS Now. And with consoles moving towards PC architecture there's very little emulation involved.

Streming servers would be running virtual machines,there hardly going to be just running one console to one server. Disagree,setting up that amount of hardware to accomodate that many people is not gonna be easily achieved. Latency hasnt magically gone away. Theres plenty of hurdles to overcome before that can become the norm imo.

And also your argument totally ignores the fact that this gen of consoles has been successful and made plenty of money. Why would they just abandon something so profitable?

Everybody said the same about PC's for years and yet here we are in 2019 with PC only growing as a platform.

gizmo

EoinHef wrote: »

Streming servers would be running virtual machines,there hardly going to be just running one console to one server. Disagree,setting up that amount of hardware to accomodate that many people is not gonna be easily achieved. Latency hasnt magically gone away. Theres plenty of hurdles to overcome before that can become the norm imo.

Just a minor point, the spinning up and down of those VMs would be dynamic based on usage so the load would never be 100m users worth simultaneously. Scaling up to the potential usage would still be a challenge but definitely within the capabilities of the company over the next number of years.

As for the Mad Box, based on the ramblings of their CEO on Twitter over the last few days, I'd say it's about as likely to be released as the Phantom console was.

SolvableKnave

It appears that Activision Investors are / have called for a Third Party investigation into the split.

company investors are suspicious that there has been fraudulent activity from behind the scenes.

Considering that the Destiny franchise has sold more than $325 million at retail, shareholders aren’t convinced that they had all of the facts prior to the split.

Rob2D

Consoles are just small form factor PC's at this stage. Just look at what's in them. But I don't think consoles are going away just yet.

I imagine things will stay as they are for the foreseeable future because as stated above it's still "profitable". PC will lead the way and that technology will be scaled down and made more efficient for the next gen of living room boxes as it always has. I just think those boxes will start to look more and more like pre-built gaming PC's. Wasn't it MicroSoft that were talking about making a modular Xbox???

I think Retro is right in mentioning streaming. It might be that soon you'll choose between a fully loaded Sony/MS box (i.e. the pre-built "PC") or have the choice of a smaller, cheaper Sony/MS streaming box. Solely just having an app on your TV or whatever is a couple generations away probably, but that's the only place it can go in the end. All roads lead to streaming eventually.

I would also like to take this opportunity to encourage all those on the fence about PC gaming to just go for it! It really is a far better and far cheaper experience.

gizmo wrote: »

Just a minor point, the spinning up and down of those VMs would be dynamic based on usage so the load would never be 100m users worth simultaneously. Scaling up to the potential usage would still be a challenge but definitely within the capabilities of the company over the next number of years.

Agreed. In fact I would say it's a far more attractive prospect to just build a few server centers around the world as a once off rather than to keep pumping out hardware boxes at a loss forever.

Retr0gamer

EoinHef wrote: »

And also your argument totally ignores the fact that this gen of consoles has been successful and made plenty of money. Why would they just abandon something so profitable?

Because as Netflix, spotify, et al. have shown they will be abandoning it for a much more profitable model.

No hardware to make losses on. No low attach rate customers as everyone pays a subscription. Lower infrastructure costs and capable of reaching customers on devices they already own.

Sony has PS Plus and PSNow, Xbox has the very successful game pass and even Nintendo has their own online subscription service and in japan you can stream current gen quality games to switch. These services are going to get pushed more and there will be a move away from physical media. It won't be next gen but it will be quite likely next gen could be the last gen.

Varik

The loss on the hardware was very slight apparently this gen, and they started to turn a profit early on.

Whatever about PC gaming, I think general personal use is declining. Most people who aren't really gamers or only console gamers, tend to use their phones for everything. 2018 was the first time in 6 years that PC sales worldwide were up year over year.

No hardware to make losses on. No low attach rate customers as everyone pays a subscription.

Just with the PS4 sales news, you'd think the attach rate would have been lower but it was reasonably high 9.6 games or there about.

Benzino

We are not ready for fully streaming consoles, certainly not in Ireland. When gamers are buying consoles for 4k, I really don't think the broadband in this country is good enough to stream 4k video while also having other devices connected to the same network, certainly outside Dublin.

Also the costs of running servers is very high. Sure Netflix and Spotify do it, but they aren't running the latest games at 1080p+. To have servers run and stream the last of us 2 on high settings isn't going to be cheap for the 10m+ players and I think a lot of people would be turned off the subscription price to run such a thing.

Combine all this with Sony's networking history, and I hope they don't go fully streaming anytime soon.

ERG89

Benzino wrote:

Combine all this with Sony's networking history, and I hope they don't go fully streaming anytime soon.

PS Now is nowhere near where it needs to be in 2019.
I can't say Nintendo leave me with much confidence either. Playing online Smash is just like what I imagine playing an online game was in 2004. Crazy input lag at times.

Robert ninja

EoinHef wrote: »

Sony are approaching 100million consoles sold. I dont think there on the way out. Not for a few gens anyway.

Different versions ie disc less consoles and streaming consoles will be a thing and just like people want a PC to play PC games,a lot of people want a console to play games even if they buy content digitally.

For years people said PC gaming was dying,look at it now.

I meant consoles as hardware, not their brand overall. They're transitioning to services. They'll be another DRM client with Sony/MC-branded hardware as a parallel product. That's what I suspect anyway.

gizmo

EA Cancels Open-World Star Wars Game

Looks like EA have canned the open-world Star Wars game that was spun off from the linear one that had been in development at Visceral Games prior to their closure.

The article update at the end is quite interesting though, while we're still getting Jedi: Fallen Order from Respawn, personally I'd still prefer to see a "smaller-scale Star Wars project" with an EA-backed budget that would hopefully be a more focused affair than a potentially larger scale, live-service driven game from the company. Still, late 2020 will be tight unless they can reuse a lot of content from the previous projects.

gizmo

gizmo wrote: »

EA Cancels Open-World Star Wars Game

Looks like EA have canned the open-world Star Wars game that was spun off from the linear one that had been in development at Visceral Games prior to their closure.

The article update at the end is quite interesting though, while we're still getting Jedi: Fallen Order from Respawn, personally I'd still prefer to see a "smaller-scale Star Wars project" with an EA-backed budget that would hopefully be a more focused affair than a potentially larger scale, live-service driven game from the company. Still, late 2020 will be tight unless they can reuse a lot of content from the previous projects.

Classic EA

gizmo

Fred The Red wrote: »

Classic EA

It's 2019 and the open-world project was still early in development. With their contract with Disney due to expire in 2023 and with a new console generation on the horizon, if they were unsure the title could be completed on time, then scaling back their ambitions to a smaller sized project makes perfect sense.

I suppose one could point to Visceral's game, Ragtag, a potentially smaller scale project given its linear nature, and laugh at EA's decision to cancel it given the above scenario but thanks to interviews with actual staff, we know the cancellation of that project was far more complicated than originally assumed after some of the comments made by company execs at the time.

ERG89

That project was f**ked when it was originally cancelled anyway. The best it could have done now was be used in the next battlefront. You can't just change a story driven game into an open world one overnight.
If EA makes another Star Wars game they have to make sure it's something worthwhile that people want to play; never understood why they didn't just ask Bioware to make a Star Wars game or Obsidian but you can't monetise it so that was never on the cards.

Potential-Monke

Skerries wrote: »

totally impractical but I want one

To get beyond the PC/Console stuff, I also want one of these. I don't care if it's impractical, or can't be moved, whatever, I just want one! But, I'd like to change the monitors to edgeless, so when you're using all 3, there is not black border between screens.

The issue was canning the Single Player adventure in the first place.
CEOs simply looking for the 'live services' route as they try and push the 'Single player games are dying' agenda.

Well 2018 proved that to be complete bolox

EA have had enough of live services **** ups recently with Battlefield 5 under-preforming.

Only themselves to blame.

gizmo

ERG89 wrote: »

That project was f**ked when it was originally cancelled anyway. The best it could have done now was be used in the next battlefront. You can't just change a story driven game into an open world one overnight.
If EA makes another Star Wars game they have to make sure it's something worthwhile that people want to play; never understood why they didn't just ask Bioware to make a Star Wars game or Obsidian but you can't monetise it so that was never on the cards.

They are making another Star Wars game, they have Respawn working on Jedi: Fallen Order. As for Bioware, they would have been off the table at that stage because those teams were already working on Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda - hence tapping Respawn.

Obsidian is an interesting one though. I'd wager EA felt that they had neither the scale nor the internal technology to make the game they wanted? **** knows really...

ERG89

Fred The Red wrote: »

The issue was canning the Single Player adventure in the first place.
CEOs simply looking for the 'live services' route as they try and push the 'Single player games are dying' agenda.

Well 2018 proved that to be complete bolox

EA have had enough of live services **** ups recently with Battlefield 5 under-preforming.

Only themselves to blame.

Even if they want to do a single player game they are not something you could do fast.
Look how long God of War, Spiderman or Red Dead 2 were in development for. 4 years apiece for God of War & Spiderman. I think Red Dead 2 was done over 8 years across multiple studios.

ERG89

ERG89 wrote: »

Even if they want to do a single player game they are not something you could do fast.
Look how long God of War, Spiderman or Red Dead 2 were in development for. 4 years apiece for God of War & Spiderman. I think Red Dead 2 was done over 8 years across multiple studios.

They scrapped 2+ years of development work if I recall when this was originally canned as a single player title back in 2017. (Need to double check the specifics on this and will edit as I can't remember off the top of my head)

EA already had destroyed Dead Space 3 with it's monitisation. It's all on EA.

gizmo

Fred The Red wrote: »

They scrapped 2+ years of development work if I recall when this was originally canned as a single player title back in 2016.

EA already had destroyed Dead Space 3 with it's monitisation. It's all on EA.

And after two years of development all they had to show for it was a “sampler platter” of gameplay across a number of demos. Again, as I said above, we have a very good idea of what went wrong with that project now so it's utterly reductive to claim they just cancelled it because they were trying to move away from single player games.

Hell, if they were so opposed to them, why would they not have cancelled Jedi: Fallen Order at the same time, it's a single-player story-driven game too.

https://twitter.com/VinceZampella/status/1005547237215092736?s=20

gizmo

gizmo wrote: »

And after two years of development all they had to show for it was a “sampler platter” of gameplay across a number of demos. Again, as I said above, we have a very good idea of what went wrong with that project now so it's utterly reductive to claim they just cancelled it because they were trying to move away from single player games.

Hell, if they were so opposed to them, why would they not have cancelled Jedi: Fallen Order at the same time, it's a single-player story-driven game too.

https://twitter.com/VinceZampella/status/1005547237215092736?s=20

EA history shows this is absolutely the reason.
Reviewing their proven history over the last 10+ years on where their priorities lie is enough for me to be confident in this thought process.

The defense of the like of EA I find incredibly odd. Especially when EA publicly announce single player titles are dying.

Exact Quotes;

“As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a much more linear game [which] people don’t like as much today as they did five years ago or ten years ago,”

Penn

Ubisoft have also cancelled 'Pioneer', a space-based exploration game hinted at in Watch Dogs 2.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-15-pioneer-the-space-exploration-game-teased-in-watch-dogs-2-is-reportedly-dead

Venom

Some back story on EA's history of canning Star Wars games in recent years.

gizmo

Fred The Red wrote: »

EA history shows this is absolutely the reason.
Ignoring their proven history over the last 10+ years on where their priorities lie is enough for me to be confident in this thought process.

The defense of the like of EA I find incredibly odd. Especially when EA publicly announce single player titles are dying.

Exact Quotes;

“As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a much more linear game [which] people don’t like as much today as they did five years ago or ten years ago,”

Yes, that was the quote from Blake Jorgensen, the CFO of the company, at a tech conference shortly after the closure of Visceral. My own thoughts on the veracity of the statement aside, I addressed that comment in my original reply when I said "...we know the cancellation of that project was far more complicated than originally assumed after some of the comments made by company execs at the time."

I've linked the article above which provides this insight via interviews with people who actually worked on the project. I highly recommend giving it a read but to give you an idea of the thoughts of some of the actual devs at the time of the cancellation...

“If anything, EA should’ve probably canceled this project earlier. I think Söderlund and them were too nice, gave us too many opportunities.”

“Ultimately, the idea of doing a game of this scope, this expense, this fidelity, at this studio never made sense,” said a former Visceral staffer.

As ERG89 put it so eloquently above, the project was ****ed at this stage. :pac:

On top of this you still have another high profile single player Star Wars project which is begun at the same time, which hasn't been cancelled and is due out later this year.

This has nothing to do with anyone defending EA, the facts simply don't align with your assertions.

gizmo

gizmo wrote: »

Yes, that was the quote from Blake Jorgensen, the CFO of the company, at a tech conference shortly after the closure of Visceral. My own thoughts on the veracity of the statement aside, I addressed that comment in my original reply when I said "...we know the cancellation of that project was far more complicated than originally assumed after some of the comments made by company execs at the time."

I've linked the article above which provides this insight via interviews with people who actually worked on the project. I highly recommend giving it a read but to give you an idea of the thoughts of some of the actual devs at the time of the cancellation...





As ERG89 put it so eloquently above, the project was ****ed at this stage. :pac:

On top of this you still have another high profile single player Star Wars project which is begun at the same time, which hasn't been cancelled and is due out later this year.

This has nothing to do with anyone defending EA, the facts simply don't align with your assertions.

It's really a staunch defense of their ****ty practices.
They are simply greedy, untrustworthy and they swallow up game devs and rip them apart and close them down over and over again.
Dice already are becoming victims to their bull****. Respawn are on the hitlist too.

Won't be long before another story emerges.

EoinHef

Whatever the reasons for cancellation,good or bad,its pretty clear EA have done very little with the star wars IP. Not one good game yet imo. Both Battlefronts are average shooters at best for me.

gizmo

Fred The Red wrote: »

It's really a staunch defense of their ****ty practices.
They are simply greedy, untrustworthy and they swallow up game devs and rip them apart and close them down over and over again.
Dice already are becoming victims to their bull****. Respawn are on the hitlist too.

Won't be long before another story emerges.

Nothing that I've said above either defends or contradicts any of this.

For what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that since Disney and EA signed their contract back in 2013, the latter have completely and utterly squandered the licence through gross levels of mismanagement.

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1085570120733392897?s=19

Lol

Salt and Sanctuary finally getting an Xbox release on Feb 6.

CastorTroy

Fred The Red wrote: »

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1085570120733392897?s=19

Lol

Thought that game came out ages ago. And what's the mystery when the list the contents? Strange. I guess the mystery is why someone would buy it. The jigsaw is the single player content

gimli2112

there's a serious amount of games coming up that interest me. Division 2 is a day 1 for me, Anthem seems it could be something I'd like but I know very little about it, Metro Exodus I liked the first 2 - never finished them but this looks fantastic on console and RE2 already purchased.