Game News 2.0

Penn

Even though I'm not entirely happy with some of the mtx stuff they implement, it can't be argued that they release solid, completed games, treat their IP well without forcing them into live service nonsense, and overall deserve a lot of success imo.

https://twitter.com/Genki_JPN/status/1788463122703061020

Now use some of those profits and make Devil May Cry 6!

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122116519#Comment_122116519

And to give them their due, they've raised staff wages and lowered their working hours in that time as well.

cnocbui

Quite a feat, when game industry layoffs are estimated to amount to 20,000 between Jan 23 and now.

Grumpypants

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122116519#Comment_122116519

Make good games...make more money. A mad business practice.

johnny_ultimate

Just to continue the good news…

I’d heard early whispers Animal Well was a real doozy… and the reviews seem to be suggesting that’s very much the case. Really excited about this one now.

Quite the first game for Dunkey’s first distribution effort.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/animal-well-review

https://www.eurogamer.net/animal-well-review

Zero-Cool

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122116560#Comment_122116560

SkillUp (I know he can be hit or miss) says it's one of the best metrodivania games he's ever played. Said I'd check out the price on playstation and never realised it was one of the free games with PS Plus this month, nice!

johnny_ultimate

It’s also apparently an insanely deep secret machine, requiring actual cross-player collaboration to decipher. Lots of comparisons to Outer Wilds and The Witness, on top of being a very satisfying and inventive Metroidvania. Seems designed to specifically appeal to my brain.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122116625#Comment_122116625

Guess I'm going to have to play this asap.

Zero-Cool

Just played for 10 minutes, instantly intriguing and fun. I usually turn off joypad vibrations and sounds but they fit so well with this. Could definitely get lost down this rabbit hole, looking forward to giving it a proper go tonight.

TitianGerm

Saw this on Reddit but apparently Sony are pulling Ghosts of Tushima pre orders from regional stores where PSN isn't available.

Zero-Cool

Strange as most people won't even touch multiplayer so could just have a disclaimer that if you want to play online, you need a psn but i suppose they're not taking chances after helldivers

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122117152#Comment_122117152

I'd say it comes down to the fact the multiplayer is part of the Directors Cut edition, so they can't sell the game there if they already know part of the game is completely unplayable.

Sony really starting to shoot themselves in the foot with this one.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122117299#Comment_122117299

Yep people would be perfectly within their rights under European law to request a refund even if they played the single player part for 80+ hours. Covering their asses and for good reason

SuperBowserWorld

The Capcom sales are good, but it's ridiculous how far Nintendo are ahead of the rest sales wise. It's like 10x sales. And still selling them full price. I'd say the didn't release Switch 2 this year as they just couldn't be arsed. Even the Princess Peach game selling well beyond expectations.

johnny_ultimate

Excellent analysis of Xbox’s no good, very bad, terrible predicament.

https://www.eurogamer.net/what-is-the-point-of-xbox

“Xbox has spun its wheels for more than a decade, lurching from U-turn to U-turn, strategic reboot to strategic reboot, acquisition to acquisition, closure to closure. The good times have always felt just over the horizon. Project Scorpio will set the tone; Game Pass is the future; the Series X will have the games; Starfield will jump-start Game Pass now it's stalled. The growing sentiment today is that they'll probably never come.”

recyclops

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122118690#Comment_122118690

That's a fantastic article that if imagine very few could disagree with

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122118598#Comment_122118598

The sales had declined quite a bit last year until the Christmas period when they went through the roof again. I imagine they realised they had another year left of switch sales. Best not to end a good thing while it's still going strong.

johnny_ultimate

Excruciating executive word salad:

https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1788728698184540355

I was going to suggest it was extraordinary that this was the best MS could come up with for a scheduled interview, but maybe this gibberish is the best they can get away without implicating themselves further.

Also, I know these friendly 'executive chat' interviews are glorified PR work, but it's a shame Bond wasn't pushed a lot harder on this stuff given the events of the last few days.

Potential-Monke

Seems like there isn't much difference between politicians and game company presidents. Neither can answer a straight question. I just hope that there isn't mong term damage here, studios no longer have a guarantee of a future even if successful... massive room here for Sony to step in, purchase/poach the talent and get the games that these people want to make, made. Queue a new game; Sound System Dash.

Do MS own the ex-studios IPs? Like, yeah, HiFi Rush is theirs, but the back catalogue of Arkane?

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122120115#Comment_122120115

Unfortunately it just proves what everyone thought; it doesn't matter that the game was good, won awards, was successful by pretty much every metric (as per their own words 3 months after release) and likely made a profit. It didn't make enough of a profit. It didn't make all the profit. And it was a franchise that they couldn't monetise the sh*t out of.

I think the graph on the screen over them explains a lot; Xbox's Year-over-Year growth. It doesn't matter that they're still far above a few years ago. Since the last few years have been downwards on the huge spike they saw a few years ago (presumably that's 2020 with the launch of the Series X/S), it's seen as failing. Though how much of that downwards turn is also down to the huge costs of their acquisitions is unknown.

PixelPlayer

Absolute cringe. If they really wanted to, Hi-Fi rush would be prime for MT, DLC, Season passes, skins etc, if that's what they really want.

I think the metrics have probably shown a different demographic. Possibly popular with older gamers and not kiddies who spend their pocket money on skins.

It really does not bode well for xbox or for gaming in general. They've shown the direction they are taking it and it's not good. I'm happy for kids who play fortnite and get enjoyment from it. But if that is the ONLY thing they are interested in. Jeez, how depressing.

Isn't Satah Bond from AT&T or something like that? She's from mobile gaming anyway and we all know what an "in app purrchases" mine field that is.

Mr Crispy

It will be interesting to see how they handle the SGF season. Spencer is supposedly doing a sit down chat with Ryan McCaffrey on IGN Live, with a live audience to boot. If McCaffrey has any stones at all, he'll grill him.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122120220#Comment_122120220

IGN/McCaffrey posted this on Tiktok at the very least, but yeah will be interesting to see how hard they grill him in person/live.

https://www.tiktok.com/@ign/video/7366808782493453610?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7303831247011497505

johnny_ultimate

One small tidbit of good news is that Hi-Fi Rush is apparently still getting its physical release. Especially important as Microsoft has a track record of pulling games once licenses expire (see: Forza Horizon) and this one has a bunch of licensed music in it. Digital owners should already be fine going by previous form, but could easily see the game being pulled from Game Pass and storefronts in a few years.

https://twitter.com/LimitedRunGames/status/1788563319302836665

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122120148#Comment_122120148

Also it shows how shítty Gamepass can be. It didn't make enough of a profit because how could it? It was essentially free. Also heard that a lot of the team's bonuses were tied to sales but because it went on Gamepass, that never really materialised.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122120411#Comment_122120411

If Game Pass revenue isn't sufficient to support 'smaller' games - and by all of Microsoft's words and deeds it apparently isn't - it surely isn't sufficient to fund 'bigger' games either. The reporting that MS is internally torn on whether to put Call of Duty on Game Pass sums that up, as are Sony and Nintendo's decisions to wholeheartedly stick with the standard release model. There's no real financial arithmetic where putting the best selling game of the year on a subscription service makes sense - even when its multi-platform, you're devaluing the game on other platforms. They might still do it to justify the amount of money they spent, but it'll be a big financial hit. There's no planet on which Starfield, no matter how many players it had, could be considered a financial win on the scale of Tears of the Kingdom or Spiderman 2 (even with the latter's wild production costs - at least a big percentage of that was clawed back at launch). Sony and Microsoft AAA games are likely becoming unwieldly propositions anyway due to soaring production costs, let alone when you're starving the studios of normal sales.

From my vantage point the only games really benefit from Game Pass now are indie or AA games that get some guaranteed launch income (at a cost of lost sales) and much rarer games like Palworld that have breakout success and achieve some performance bonuses. The maths clearly aren't adding up for a bunch of other games, Microsoft's first party titles among them.

I think it was Washington Post's Gene Park who observed that maybe the kind of 'small' game Microsoft really wants is a first party Balatro, Manor Lords, Hades 2 etc… Genuine 'small' indie titles that have massive breakthrough success. But in their current massive corporate structure I really struggle to see them pulling that off. And a €15 type of indie game isn't exactly going to draw subscribers either, unless it's exclusive to the subscription platform.

McFly85

While I agree that indie games are the biggest beneficiaries of GP - it’s always been pretty well curated from that point, and a high point of the service finding out a highly rated indie is day 1. If it was just that, along with some older titles at something like €7 a month it would be fantastic.

But also, for me CoD is a no-brainer for GP. It’s still multi plat so will generate massive sales on PlayStation and PC, and a significant portion of revenue comes from microtransactions, selling new gun packs, skins etc, which would come in anyway(and players may be more inclined to get some of these if the base game is in their sub).

If CoD doesn’t hit Game Pass, it’s the beginning of the end of the service.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122120838#Comment_122120838

Going by Tom Warren's reporting, it's far from a sure thing: https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/8/24151814/microsoft-xbox-layoffs-strategy-changes-arkane-tango

Microsoft has also had internal debates about whether to put new releases of Call of Duty into Game Pass. I understand this is a debate that has been ongoing internally for quite some time, with concerns from some that the revenue that Call of Duty typically generates for Activision Blizzard will be undermined by Game Pass.

I’m told that Microsoft has also considered increasing the price of Game Pass Ultimate again. These are only considerations, so a final decision could mean we still see a future Call of Duty release appear in most versions of Game Pass. The debate internally reflects the fact Microsoft’s Xbox strategy has shifted from just delivering its games exclusively into Game Pass to considering bringing more Xbox games to multiple platforms.

It is Microsoft's 'trump card' for Game Pass, and one they spent $69 billion to secure. I wouldn't at all be surprised if they played it. But it's potentially a lot of lost guaranteed sales to prop up the seemingly struggling Game Pass strategy. So I also wouldn't at all be surprised if they stuck with the standard release model for now at least.

And certainly a bump in price for Game Pass to justify the Call of Duty inclusion would immediately make Game Pass significantly less of a good deal.

Mr Crispy

In that same interview for Bloomberg, Bond reaffirmed that all first party titles would be coming day one to Game Pass.

McFly85

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122120894#Comment_122120894

MS seemingly don’t understand the industry, the service they have, or their consumers.

Raising the price because CoD is on gamepass has as much of a chance of losing subscribers as gaining ones - Ultimate is €17 a month which is a significant expenditure, and there’s a hell of a lot of people that either play CoD almost exclusively so would be better off just buying it, or people who don’t care about CoD at all and a price increase will be the tipping point for them to leave the service.

Adding CoD at no extra cost should be the way to go - not only will you still be making significant money through other platforms and microtransactions, you also have the opportunity to introduce millions of GP subscribers to CoD too. Even if a small percentage get into it regularly it will generate more money.

But I suppose I’m forgetting the main thing, this won’t move the needle as much as the shareholders demand so sure, remove it from GP and then shutter some more studios when it doesn’t generate enough money I guess.