Game News 2.0

Grumpypants

So the "play anywhere" controller is supposed to work with all endpoints to play your games.

They also have (or had) plans for other hardware like a handheld, mobile controllers, and a cloud device.

PixelPlayer

I can't tell if these leaks are good or bad for gamers. Xbox will need to come out with something different otherwise Sony are just going to take these specs and do as little as possible more to be able to say they have the better next gen console. It can't be good for gamers.

Wasn't there something similar before? They stuck more RAM in the PS4 at the last minute because it was leaked that Xbox had more RAM, something along those lines.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121130413#Comment_121130413

Honestly find the npc quests in from games are better off ignored unless you want to new game plus them with a FAQ or just watch a vaati Vidya. Usually the reward is a miniscule bit of lore and the lore shouldn't be why you play the games. You have dragons to fight instead.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121130914#Comment_121130914

Nope it was more MS was caught off by the speed of the RAM. MS were going to go the eDRAM route the PS2 and 360 went. They clocked the CPU and GPU a little higher to match the PS4 but you don't go making hardware changes at the drop of a hat when building a console. No extra ram was added and it was defo MS chasing Sony.

PixelPlayer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121131111#Comment_121131111

Aha yes that was what I was thinking of. It was a very vague memory of what happened.

Absolutely I'm not concerned if it is Sony or Xbox copying the other. It's that the competition (one or the other) has everything on them and will do as little as possible to get the upper hand.

As opposed to neither having any clue and having to focus on producing the best console they can.

But maybe behind it all it's normal for them to know what the other is working on.

Zero-Cool

This is going to get unfairly drowned out with the xbox noise not there's a Bluey game coming out to all platforms in November!!!

Smiths employee : Aw your kid is gonna love this.

Me: yes.... yes my kid....

https://youtu.be/S-PYqMxXKKk?si=BFOTmx2pMADHPOi3

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121131184#Comment_121131184

Hopefully it's on GamePass...

Potential-Monke

Horizon FW map was great. You could customise it to be Ubi icons everywhere, or remove everything. Covered both sides and everything inbetween. With the power of current gen and devs getting more comfortable, draw distance improving drastically will allow sight exploration more. I did love in Odyssey that if you could see it, no matter how far, you could go to it. And it was amazing on PS4 Pro so I'm hopeful for the future.

However, no one has mentioned the great news from that leak. Wreckfest 2 in December?!?

JimBurnley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121131698#Comment_121131698

Wreckfest 2! Boom, happy days

Jordan 199

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121131713#Comment_121131713

Smashing stuff.

Who is developing the Indiana Jones game? I know Mr Todd is the director or producer, but are BGS working on it or someone else?

sniper_samurai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133242#Comment_121133242

Machine Games iirc.

johnny_ultimate

I always tense up when I hear 'Bethesda game', given the consistently bland and underwhelming output of their main development studio. But then I remember their satellite studios like Arkane, Machine Games and Tango Gameworks are often making really cool, interesting stuff (with obvious exceptions like Redfall).

It's a strange one. Indiana Jones hasn't performed well as a movie franchise recently so you'd wonder how much interest there is in the younger generation of gamers. We'll see how it turns out I guess.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133513#Comment_121133513

Is the game still in active, hot development? Cos the utter failure of Dial of Destiny might have cooled the heels of those at Disney trying to push out some spin-off media.

CatInABox

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133591#Comment_121133591

The way Todd has been talking about it, yes, it's most definitely on.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133591#Comment_121133591

It was in those leaked Xbox documents. 🤷‍♂️

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133606#Comment_121133606

Ah, I'm not up to speed on those; how old are the leaks dating back to?. Cos it's somewhat surprising then given Dial of Destiny was an abject failure and then some. Even accounting for its insane budget it was a crash & burn.

johnny_ultimate

The leaks aren't 'new' documents it seems (i.e. a lot are from a couple of years ago, around the time they were acquiring Bethesda), but they are fascinating - probably the biggest insight we've ever gotten into an active major player, well beyond what emerged in the recent trial.

You can see how much revenue they forecast for the Indiana Jones game in one of the leaked docs. Around the same as an Oblivion remaster, apparently, and nowhere near as much as a new Doom game.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/19/23880132/microsoft-ftc-documents-leak-oblivion-fallout-3-remaster-doom-xbox

Penn

I think the performance of the recent films will make f*ck all difference to whether or not the game comes out. The films are an Indy well past his prime, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was widely derided for just bad writing.

The game would be a different beast entirely, and more about playing as an Indy in his prime in a new story. There would still be an appetite for that independent of the recent films.

johnny_ultimate

I think licensed games are still a real roll of the dice for games, and very unpredictable in terms of success. You'd think some of the recent Marvel games like Avengers and Guardians would've been blockbusters on name recognition alone, but only really the Spider-Man games have broken through.

CastorTroy

Avengers had the whole GaaS against it, and the reviews as well as people seeing the character appearances as knockoffs of the movie versions. Then I think Guardians suffered due to that even though it wasn't GaaS and had good reviews.

Not sure what I would want from an Indy game. It's been said before but Uncharted is pretty much Indy already, though Nathan Drake would be a lot more active.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133675#Comment_121133675

That's it, it'll always come down to gameplay and reviews in the end. Avengers was an obvious turkey from long before release. That game never looked good and was obviously going to be a grindy, repetitive mess (even though there was a lot of the gameplay I enjoyed, it was just wrapped in an ungodly amount of bullsh*t).

GOTG surprised me because if anything, it was released with such little fanfare and attention, like they thought it'd die on release so just pushed it out, even though I actually liked it quite a bit and thought it was solid if unspectacular.

Lord of The Rings and Star Wars have nearly had some of their biggest success when they step away from the main characters or the films and just do something set in that world (Shadow of Mordor, Jedi Fallen Order).

An Indiana Jones game though, I just can't see how the recent films with an old Indy will really have that big of an effect on the development on the game, especially if they were already deep into development and have the licence when Dial of Destiny came out. I'd be expecting something more along the lines of Uncharted/Tomb Raider than the films.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133722#Comment_121133722

An Indiana Jones game though, I just can't see how the recent films with an old Indy will really have that big of an effect on the development on the game, especially if they were already deep into development and have the licence when Dial of Destiny came out. I'd be expecting something more along the lines of Uncharted/Tomb Raider than the films.

It might, if only for the question "is this IP valuable as something marketable?"

There's a new Robocop game coming out, complete with Peter Weller voicing Murphy n' all, but it smells like a very Double-A production; so something that mightn't sell like hot cakes - but also won't require mammoth sales to offset a giant development budget. I could be way off there, mind you. Whereas the Indy game itself smells like it'll be AAA up the wazoo, between Bethesda & Disney behind the wheel. WIth all the accompanying financial or critical pressures that'll come with.

Varik

Shadow of mordor and Jedi order were competent games at the very least, the IP helped them sell a lot more but even if they wouldn't have sold as much they'd have been enjoyable without the IP. Avengers was outright bad, and Guardians was a bit forgettable (i remember the kid and that's about it).

The current Spiderman games success isn't a given based on the IP, we'd the PS1 games, the early PS2 games, and then 15+ years of bad Spiderman games.

At some point in history an IP could sell alone until you'd get absolute ET level trash but it's not that way anymore, a bad spiderman movie could still make 1bn but a bad game will bomb and bomb hard. A movie plays itself and then it's over, you actually have to do something with a game and if it's unenjoyable you're going to drop it.

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121133722#Comment_121133722

On your point about franchises not being tarnished by recent entries, one example of a game that has done fantastically (despite lukewarm recent entries) is Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. It sold over 5 million copies in its first two months, and may I add, is a brilliant and fun game (not to mention a game that gives endless belly laughs).

Retr0gamer

There's been talk of Indiana Jones games for years, I remember there was one meant to be on the Rage engine (GTA 4 engine) and a video leaked of indie fighting on top of the teams in San Francisco. It got cancelled in the end. I don't think we have had an indie game since the N64 games.

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121134438#Comment_121134438

... Lego Indiana Jones 😁

johnny_ultimate

Something depressing about seeing a studio that specializes* in racing games being drafted in to just focus on a dull mega-franchise like Battlefield.

Whatever about the final quality (pretty good!) of the game, I've rarely seen a game as unceremoniously dumped as NFS: Unbound. Bizarrely so, given the game was hardly any sort of embarrassment! Any perceived commercial failure was entirely down to EA leaving the game to die.

https://www.eurogamer.net/need-for-speed-developer-criterion-to-focus-on-battlefield

*yes, I know they made Black all those console generations ago 😅

Zero-Cool

I feel bad for the NFS devs. The last 3 games were sent out to die. They receive maybe 1 or 2 big updates and then nothing. In this case unbound lasted a bit longer but updated with season pass bollox. The market is there for NFS not EA just don't know what to do with it.