Game News 2.0

pixelburp

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'm getting more samurai Jack vibes from it, and Guacamelee's art style wasn't particularly original either.

It's not just the art style though; some of those gameplay set pieces - and elements like the fighting moves - looked very like Guacamelee. Again, yes it didn't invent a genre either but the trailer had a lot of similarities beyond coincidence for my blood lol

Retr0gamer

I'll take your word for it as I've not played guacamelee yet.

CastorTroy

Watching the video for it, I was thinking it wouldn't be suited for the Switch in portable mode. The characters looked tiny.

Mr Crispy

Mr Crispy wrote: »

One of my favourite SNES games is coming to the Switch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1_IC0a2mg

Correction; it's coming to all the things. Except Stadia.

Only €12.49 on Steam and GOG, so hopefully the XB, PS, and Switch versions will be priced accordingly.

Penn

Ubisoft planning on switching to developing more Free to play games instead of their 3-4 AAA annual games

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ubisoft-says-its-changing-strategy-to-focus-on-more-high-end-free-to-play-games/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

“In line with the evolution of our high-quality line-up that is increasingly diverse, we are moving on from our prior comment regarding releasing 3-4 premium AAAs per year,” said Ubisoft’s chief financial officer Frederick Duguet.

“It is indeed no longer a proper indication of our value creation dynamics. For example, our expectation for Just Dance and Riders Republic are consistent with some of the industry’s AAA performers.

“Additionally, we are building high-end free-to-play games to be trending towards AAA ambitions over the long-term,” he added.

“This is purely a financial communication evolution and doesn’t change the fact that we continue to expect a high cadence of content delivery including powerful premium and free-to-play new releases.”

J Mysterio

Mr Crispy wrote: »

One of my favourite SNES games is coming to the Switch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1_IC0a2mg

Thought it was Kid Chameleon for a sec, but yeah, remember this too, albeit a little less excitedly.

Retr0gamer

But Zombies is great and Kid Chameleon is a pile of arse biscuits?

Grumpypants

Penn wrote: »

Ubisoft planning on switching to developing more Free to play games instead of their 3-4 AAA annual games

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ubisoft-says-its-changing-strategy-to-focus-on-more-high-end-free-to-play-games/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

"Value creation dynamics" and "financial communication evolution" are some of the daftest business buzz words I've heard.

pixelburp

Up there with "surprise mechanics" as a sly way of saying your game has gambling methodology in it.

J Mysterio

Retr0gamer wrote: »

But Zombies is great and Kid Chameleon is a pile of arse biscuits?

I have fond memories of it.

Retr0gamer

Grumpypants wrote: »

"Value creation dynamics" and "financial communication evolution" are some of the daftest business buzz words I've heard.

A Ubisoft Original.

Retr0gamer

J Mysterio wrote: »

I have fond memories of it.

Never got the appeal of that game although I know there's a few that like it. The platforming just feels janky, the levels are all the same and have that western 16-bit 'airplane hangar' design and it's waaaaaaay too long.

Shapey Fiend

I like it more than most Western platformers because there's no collecting token bollocks. There are a few levels that are huge but there are lots of tiny ones as well to keep the tempo up. Forced scrollers are always good from that point of view too, although I know most people hate em.

The suit abilities are fun. There's a touch of DecapAttack/Psycho Fox intertia to the controls that may not be to everybody's taste but its consistent.

The warping/branching path structure was good too in that you could tackle levels in a different order on repeat play. Getting entirely new levels felt like a meaningful secret/reward when it was intended you replay from the start every time. It's less than an hour long so I don't think there was any need for passwords or whatever.

Mr Crispy

Penn wrote: »

Ubisoft planning on switching to developing more Free to play games instead of their 3-4 AAA annual games

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/ubisoft-says-its-changing-strategy-to-focus-on-more-high-end-free-to-play-games/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Some Ubi-person has tweeted to clarify that they still intend to release 3-4 AAA games a year, but they'd be adding F2P games to their catalogue as well.

Penn

Grumpypants wrote: »

"Value creation dynamics" and "financial communication evolution" are some of the daftest business buzz words I've heard.

If "financial communication evolution" means making players more aware of DLC/MTXs, considering they already put that stuff on the splash screen on the main menu of the PS5, and then again plastered all over the main menu of the game itself, I'm not sure how much more they can communicate it other than sending Yves Guillemot door to door to tell people in person.

Markitron

Mr Crispy wrote: »

Some Ubi-person has tweeted to clarify that they still intend to release 3-4 AAA games a year, but they'd be adding F2P games to their catalogue as well.

I don't really see this affecting them all that much, they will just use 4-5 studios per AC game instead of the usual 7-8. **** it might actually be a good thing if it resulted in the maps getting smaller.

gizmo

Penn wrote: »

If "financial communication evolution" means making players more aware of DLC/MTXs, considering they already put that stuff on the splash screen on the main menu of the PS5, and then again plastered all over the main menu of the game itself, I'm not sure how much more they can communicate it other than sending Yves Guillemot door to door to tell people in person.

Given that it came from their CFO during an earnings call I'd wager the communication is for the benefit of their shareholders for future revenue reporting. As per one of their analysts in a subsequent tweet...

https://twitter.com/shonboppin/status/1392235911681740800

CastorTroy

Have every NPC mention how boring your clothes look and advise you to check out the online store, then have boss battles start with taunts "You'll never defeat me unless you somehow found a way to increase your power quickly and found the special weapons only available at the portal of buying"

Markitron

CastorTroy wrote: »

Have every NPC mention how boring your clothes look and advise you to check out the online store, then have boss battles start with taunts "You'll never defeat me unless you somehow found a way to increase your power quickly and found the special weapons only available at the portal of buying"

I could swear Bowser said this exact thing in Mario 64

J. Marston

Most of those F2P games will hopefully die on their arse but I suppose they only need one to be a hit for it to be all worth it.

Mr Crispy

Gabe Newell did a Q&A session with a high school recently. One student asked, "Will Steam be putting any games on consoles, or will it just stay on PC?". Gaben replied, "You will... uh... get a better idea of that by the end of year."

Alyx coming to PSVR 2? Steam coming to XB?? Gabe just trolling? Tá mé intrigued.

Markitron

Mr Crispy wrote: »

Gabe Newell did a Q&A session with a high school recently. One student asked, "Will Steam be putting any games on consoles, or will it just stay on PC?". Gaben replied, "You will... uh... get a better idea of that by the end of year."

Alyx coming to PSVR 2? Steam coming to XB?? Gabe just trolling? Tá mé intrigued.

Putting that on PSVR2 would be a serious win-win for them and Sony, I will be genuinely surprised if it is not the big launch title for that device.

johnny_ultimate

Sony: “We have a brand new VR kit. You have one of the best games ever made that nobody has actually played. Let’s get it done.”

Valve: “you’ll have to speak up, we just broke another concurrent user record.”

Retr0gamer

I'd put the house on it coming to console. The only reason alyx didn't come to PS4 is that it wouldn't have done the game justice and the move controllers aren't good enough for that experience.

BlitzKrieg

Mr Crispy wrote: »

Gabe Newell did a Q&A session with a high school recently. One student asked, "Will Steam be putting any games on consoles, or will it just stay on PC?". Gaben replied, "You will... uh... get a better idea of that by the end of year."

Alyx coming to PSVR 2? Steam coming to XB?? Gabe just trolling? Tá mé intrigued.

Curve ball thought from the side bringing steam to XB

If the xbox series X was able to become basically a low price (comparatively) entry point for pc gaming (lets be fair it already looks like a pc tower) announcing full steam compatibility would be a ridiculously insane feather in xbox's cap.

I wonder how difficult it would be though to integrate?

The easiest is just the give games a compatibility icon and push the responsibility on the developers to go game to game to implement xbox compatibility

I mean for a lot of the older games I assume the xbox might have a an emulator aspect to it to emulate the hardware of popular pc builds at the time? It could end up being like the steam controller where a lot of the work was sort of pushed on to the community and a lot of the control schemes were custom profiles people came up with that steam made easy to share around. A bunch of people could create different emulations of old pc hardware and steam would just make it easy to select the best emulation for older titles, I mean that sort of work probably could help even with modern PCs I cant for the life of me get Freedom Planet to run on my current hardware and it's not even that old.

Though the grey area of emulators with a lot of companies might make that an unwanted option.

But there are also a bunch of games with issues like all the ubisoft titles which dont really launch through steam.


Though saying that, War Thunder recently changed so it could update and launch directly through steam rather then just using it as a shortcut, so maybe its not too difficult for a shift to launch through steam.


this is a lot of pie in the sky thinking.

It doesnt get pass the big problem, economic.

Unless Valve think the market on xbox is big enough to give Microsoft a cut of every sale out of their own pocket.

Markitron

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I'd put the house on it coming to console. The only reason alyx didn't come to PS4 is that it wouldn't have done the game justice and the move controllers aren't good enough for that experience.

Pretty much. It has probably sold 90% of the Index's that it was ever going to sell at this point. There is no reason for them not to port it, aside from the fact that they are Valve and only Nintendo are worse than them for withholding things from their fans.

Robert ninja

BlitzKrieg wrote: »

Curve ball thought from the side bringing steam to XB

Tech isn't the problem. Tech was never the problem. We already know every console could have cross platform multiplayer (and probably be completely free) but they just won't do it because they have business interests. PC games are removing LAN features now because they don't want people doing anything off of their servers (Starcraft, Tabletop Sim).

Gabe left Microsoft and seemed to be shocked by where the company wanted to head for gaming (which he's probably still under NDA for). It's possibly what inspired steam and why Valve have invested millions into linux support over the last few years. Literally the only PC gaming company who seem dead set on getting as far away from Windows/MC as possible.

Safe to say I don't see him wanting any strong partnerships with Microsoft. They're a competitor in business and an antithesis in goals. Direct X is specifically designed to cripple the PC gaming industry to Microsoft's gain. Supporting it would directly contradict the money and low/zero return investments and effort Valve have been putting into other options. Just about the only reason I see them bringing VR stuff to consoles would be to encourage the industry to adopt more open standards... something that is actually gutting VR's adoption right now.


I'm pretty glad they're a private company because shareholders would've never taken them to where they are now.

Grumpypants

Valve have released on console. I'm pretty sure I've portal 2 on ps3 and the orange box on 360.

CastorTroy

Yeah was gonna say the last time Valve released a game on PlayStation, the entire network went down for weeks

johnny_ultimate

The PS3 version of Portal 2 came with a free steam key for the game. God, I wish that became the standard.