General gaming discussion

Retr0gamer

Going to have to check this out later but heard Perfect Dark is an immersive Sim with a budget. The two games in that series are gash but I'd be well up for an immersive Sim in that universe and the conspiracy theory stuff will remind me of deus ex.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122238676#Comment_122238676

Ah, there's no real way of telling without a proper look at it, and the trailer, while promising, isn't it.

CatInABox

Love that Rebellion made a game about a disaster at Sellafield

CastorTroy

Guess it's back to predicting Silksong showing up at Nintendo's show. 😀

That was a long show. I expected 30 minutes. Definitely more of interest in it that Sony's.

Zero-Cool

Missed all gaming news today but just saw new Life is Strange is back this October and Max is Beck, **** awesome!

https://twitter.com/LifeIsStrange/status/1799864646486065536?t=lxSZXe0Lp_2g4LsBX0Abvg&s=19

johnny_ultimate

Xbox have some okay-looking games coming, as they’d want to having bought up so many studios. Perfect Dark hopefully will live up to its potential, and curious to see something more substantial from Playground’s take on Fable. Still hard to be at all enthused about Microsoft’s gaming plays though after their closure of Tango, which remains the most despicable and cynical corporate gaming decision of recent times.

Mr Crispy

Too many trailers with not even a release window/year, though some did look alright tbf.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122238741#Comment_122238741

I wonder how the finances work with indie studios like this; you'd have to imagine even with the massive success of Hollow Knight, the resources aren't infinite either. Must be some squirmy looking accountants you'd imagine.

Vicxas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122238606#Comment_122238606

Yeah my bad I watched the Xbox specific trailer. Oh the embarrassment

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122238801#Comment_122238801

Strange to go for no release date with some 2024 titles, surely in June they’d be confident enough of hitting a target that might only be 3-4 months away now.

Only saw some clips but also seemed odd to focus on a cutscene for the Indiana Jones game rather than more focused gameplay.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122238825#Comment_122238825

They spent years with the original Hollow Knight as well.

Vicxas

Still no Hollow Knight release date?

PixelPlayer

Not a bad BethesdaXbox showcase.

Great to see some South of Midnight gameplay. I remain very interested in this.

I'm very cynical about the new consoles. It's a way of selling consoles to people who jave already bought consoles so they can bump the total number of xbox gamers number.

Oh and how great is it to be able to say Gears of War again. GoW back to its rightful owner 😆

Mr Crispy

I'm not sure about South of Midnight at all. I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but it sure wasn't "Cajun Forspoken".

CastorTroy

Yeah, having just played Forspoken not long ago, that was my first thought. Only to have the same thought later during Flintlock.

Zero-Cool

Just caught up on the xbox showcase, that was a fair impressive showing! Some really interesting games and looking forward to seeing if any that piqued my interest will show up on PlayStation.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122239047#Comment_122239047

Suppose there's a difference between your scrappy first game passion project and a follow-up, where suddenly there's staff and you've gone from a startup to a "proper" company. That's speaking as someone who knows zero about Team Cherry, maybe they are still a bootstrap setup.

Mr Crispy

I missed the Spencer interview with IGN. Anyone else see it? From the lack of headlines about it this morning, I'm guessing the layoffs were glossed over?

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240658#Comment_122240658

I haven’t seen the full thing, but the articles I’ve seen suggest it wasn’t a particularly challenging interview for Spencer (apologies to IGN’s journalists in advance if that’s inaccurate). This article certainly suggests it was ‘briefly’ glossed over.

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-boss-phil-spencer-addresses-studio-closures-ign-live-2024

Kind of depressing how a few trailers can make the conversation move on so swiftly from the dire state of affairs they were in barely a month ago.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240681#Comment_122240681

Had to laugh when during the showcase Matt Booty was talking about how proud they are of the innovation and passion of their teams in creating these amazing, new, exciting, diverse lineup of games…. like Call of Duty, Doom, World of Warcraft, Dragon Age… and that was before they revealed Starfield update, Elder Scrolls Online update, Diablo 4 expansion and new Gears of War.

Hi-Fi Rush 2 would have fit the mould of what he was saying far better than any of the above.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240681#Comment_122240681

Kind of depressing how a few trailers can make the conversation move on so swiftly from the dire state of affairs they were in barely a month ago.

You think that's bad, wait til all that Qatari or Saudi money starts trying to gamewash; gamers are bad but witness how unbothered sports fans are if their team or sport gets a tonne of oil money.

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240681#Comment_122240681

That's what I feared. Give us some new shiny and all is forgiven.

PixelPlayer

I'm not sure what more needs to be said? They're not going back on the layoffs. It was a corporate decision made by corporate suits. Microsoft are laying off thousands, their Azure Cloud division was hit recently.

Not to sound insensitive. I've gone through redundancy myself it's not nice. But it is unfortunately a part of life and life does go on. For me, in hindsight, it was one of the best things thst happened to me. I got a lump sum and I got a much better job after it. Those affected will get through it, especially those with talent.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240806#Comment_122240806

Yes, and even if they were asked a difficult question on this, it's a stock answer that addresses nothing. You can't really get a proper answer out of any executive.

He was asked about it by IGN, and he gave a standard response:

"The closure of any team is hard obviously on the individuals there, hard on the team," he said. "I haven't been talking publicly about this, because right now is the time for us to focus on the team and the individuals. It's obviously a decision that's very hard on them, and I want to make sure through severance and other things that we're doing the right thing for the individuals on the team. It's not about my PR, it's not about Xbox PR. It's about those teams.

"In the end, I've said over and over, I have to run a sustainable business inside the company and grow, and that means sometimes I have to make hard decisions that frankly are not decisions I love, but decisions that somebody needs to go make.

"We will continue to go forward. We will continue to invest in what we're trying to go do in Xbox and build the best business we can, which ensures we can continue to do shows like the one we just did."

https://www.eurogamer.net/xbox-boss-phil-spencer-acknowledges-hard-decisions-to-close-studios-in-first-public-comment

PixelPlayer

Played COD: WW2 campaign. The recent D-Day anniversary and a glut of war shows and documentaries got me in the mood. I have played it before but forgot that they took the Nazi flag out and never even mention the word Nazi, opting instead to call them Krauts.

It was a very bizzare decision. I get that some find it offensive and there's no good that can come out of offending people. But it is clearly trying to depict an accurate story of the liberation of France and includes what are supposed to be historically accurate battles during that period of the war. But no Nazi's.

I think the COD games since then have done a better job by keeping things ficticious while still managing to place them in a particular war or period.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240844#Comment_122240844

Might be how algorithms run everything, and now skew such that any reference to Nazis, even if contextually correct, can get accidentally black balled. Could have been less about offence and more worry that livestreams etc would get into bother.

There's a (very good) bitesized history channel on YouTube and like many others have to talk around and be careful about referencing Hitler or the Nazis cos the YouTube algorithm has / can demonetise the video. It's patently ludicrous but the automation can't differentiate between a legitimate, neutral history lesson and actual neonazis.

PixelPlayer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240882#Comment_122240882

That explanation makes much more sense.

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240806#Comment_122240806

Putting the human cost aside, it's kind of a statement of intent to close down the one studio that produced their most critically acclaimed game of the last couple of years to make up for all the money they spent on Call of Duty and giving Bobby Kotick his golden parachute.

There were a lot of interesting games at the showcase. It was better than Keighley's event I thought and I hope the stuff they showed turns out well, but Microsoft's story of the last few years has been buying up tons of studios, mismanaging them to the extent that there's been a lack of output and almost without fail that output has been far below expectations set by the trailers and hype, then shutting down one of the very few success stories they have show for it.

PixelPlayer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122240955#Comment_122240955

Don't get me wrong, I agree. It's just all been said and the decision is done. I don't see what people want Spencer to say from here on out.

Xbox need to find the balance between allowing studios to continue as they were and also enforcing some sort of controls and checks on them without going to the extent that Sony do where all studios must stick to a generic PS template making their games all very similar in an Ubisoft way.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122241006#Comment_122241006

It's kind of a hard one to judge. Yes, on the one hand there's nothing Spencer/Booty/Bond could have said during the showcase or even expanded on during interviews that would have changed anything or explained things more than they already have. As lousy and awful as the decision and reasons are, it's done. On the other hand though, they're showcasing the work of their studios and praising them for their work and creativity etc, weeks after closing studios who for the most part have done excellent work. Sure, Redfall bombed at launch, but it was an incredibly talented studio (and we don't know how much of the decisions which ultimately killed Redfall were their decisions or upper management), and they and Tango at least made original games with Hi-Fi Rush especially being a huge hit.

With the showcase, there were a few new games and IP, but it was mostly Call of Duty, Gears of War, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Doom, World of Warcraft, Diablo…. even Assassins Creed and Dragon Age got big showings at the showcase. Literally a lot of the biggest franchises that are about 20 years old with numerous installments. It just feels like showcasing how great your arm is without acknowledging the fact you recently cut off two fingers.

The games look great with new ideas and features, but it really feels like a shift towards putting everything behind your big franchises, and smaller studios not hitting largely unattainable targets could get shuttered or made into support studios for those big franchises. That's the big worry people have for Xbox studios and more clarity on the decisions behind what the metrics new games need to reach to be safe wouldn't go amiss.