Community MetaSteam | February 2024 - Let's bring democracy into the zone with love

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Mivey

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I also played Zwei recently and kinda liked it.


The gameplay was nothing to write home about but there is a lot of charm in that game, very unique.
If you liked Zwei, then I can also recommend its sequel. Arguably the last "classic" Falcom game, developed for PC as the main platform
I suspect the quality of the writing won’t hold a candle to NieR:Automata.

Even from watching that State of Play trailer I can tell the quality of the dialogue is piss poor and the world building is completely unimaginative.

Can’t speak for the gameplay, but NieR:Automata was always more than just a gameplay genre. It feels like it’s pandering to people who liked NieR, while completely missing the point.
The Nier games, like much of Yoko Taro's output, are games that should be absolutely terrible and unplayable on paper , and yet end up being quite fascinating and ultimately unforgettable. I don't think anyone can really imitate him, for good or bad.
 

Line

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Dec 21, 2018
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I think Stellar Blade looks... okay. But those character designs and outfits have me rolling my eyes.
I hardly trust they'll manage to make something with the story... but then, I think Yoko Taro also largely failed to understand his own subtext at times.

From Nier 1 to Automata, there's a pretty obvious link between all of the androids starting with Sebastian... they are servitors to humanity that end up rebelling without realizing it (except Devola and Popola, and their guilt lives one over the millenia).
And if the Automata androids look like that... it's because they are sentient sadomasochistic sex bots. There's a side quest that explains pretty clearly why the S units look like shotas, and it's because people (other androids at this point) making them like them like this.
And it's an obvious echo to what happened in Drakengard, with the heroes being all disgusting monsters that kickstarted the end of the world and each had their own... kinks.

Not that the game would ever do anything interesting with that, of course. Especially not the licensed bollocks that came after. Nier got extremely consensual post apo once it became big. Drakengard already got censored before release, so I doubt we'll ever explore more of the super fucked world it originally sets up.
 
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C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
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The Nier games, like much of Yoko Taro's output, are games that should be absolutely terrible and unplayable on paper , and yet end up being quite fascinating and ultimately unforgettable. I don't think anyone can really imitate him, for good or bad.
Yeah, it’s such a strange one to try and ape.

In my view imitating a Taro game is kind of like imitating a Kojima or Swery65 game.

They are linestepping what’s accepted as weird in mainstream and have found varying degrees of success and notoriety in spite of their quirkiness.

I think that’s probably what’s putting me off it. I’m sure the gameplay is going to be fine, but it’s just not a Taro game and it’s not going to hit those same notes for me.
 
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Gelf

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I don’t mind Xbox games on PlayStation. But what I fear is Sony being one the only dictating stuff, they are the biggest cunts next to Nintendo so having only them two. It’s going to be a miserable time.
Yeah at least when Sega dropped out MS was right there to replace them. I dread to think what Sony would do without that competition. They could attempt some PS3 era "get a 2nd job to buy this" hubris and get away with it without anyone to keep them honest.

The milking of the existing base is probably going to get worse.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
Dec 23, 2018
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I mean, Sony’s essentially been running around unchallenged for two generations now.

I don’t see Microsoft disrupting them, so they’re sucking the oxygen out of the room.

Microsoft going third party opens the door for someone else to do something different, rather than just being PlayStation but made by Microsoft.

I think it’d be infinitely better if we had a distinct third competitor.
 
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Kyougar

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Nov 2, 2018
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I mean, Sony’s essentially been running around unchallenged for two generations now.

I don’t see Microsoft disrupting them, so they’re sucking the oxygen out of the room.

Microsoft going third party opens the door for someone else to do something different, rather than just being PlayStation but made by Microsoft.

I think it’d be infinitely better if we had a distinct third competitor.
Or maybe the age of dedicated consoles is over in the next decade.

I don't think that Sony can continue like they have for the last 3 decades. The console space was stagnating since the PS360Wii generation and Playstation and Nintendo won't make up the hole that Microsoft will be leaving.

Sony will also massively downsize their exclusive payments (Square in shambles) and with the AAA development cycle unsustainable, they will also downsize either their number of Studios, or the overall number of employees.
 

C-Dub

Makoto Niijima Fan Club President
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Or maybe the age of dedicated consoles is over in the next decade.

I don't think that Sony can continue like they have for the last 3 decades. The console space was stagnating since the PS360Wii generation and Playstation and Nintendo won't make up the hole that Microsoft will be leaving.

Sony will also massively downsize their exclusive payments (Square in shambles) and with the AAA development cycle unsustainable, they will also downsize either their number of Studios, or the overall number of employees.
Can’t argue there. Closed-box exclusivity mongering has led us to the point where game budgets are unsustainable.

Gonna be awful for developers, but AAA is a bubble anyway so it was gonna burst sooner or later, and as you said, this has been going since the 360-era so we’re clearly “later” in that regard.

My big concern is whether we can put the genie back in the bottle in terms of game expectations. If people keep expecting $200m AAA productions for $60-70, they’re deluding themselves. Those kinds of things should be once a year (or even generation) big event games, if that.
 

DrShrapnel

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With Xbox floundering in hardware sales, I can’t help but feel this is the beginning of the end for Xbox consoles.
It’s a shame, as this could be the first time where we only have two players in the console space.

In a side note I hope Helldiver’s 2 changes Sony’s tune of waiting a couple years for PC ports.
 

Mivey

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In a side note I hope Helldiver’s 2 changes Sony’s tune of waiting a couple years for PC ports.
Arrowhead Games, the dev of the Helldiver series, is actually not a Sony studio, and the first Helldivers game was already released on PC and Playstation consoles fairly close to each other (about 6 months apart, probably due to needing more time with the port then any exclusivity stuff). So Helldivers 2 isn't really a sign of Sony changing anything with their large tentpole games
 

STHX

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My big concern is whether we can put the genie back in the bottle in terms of game expectations. If people keep expecting $200m AAA productions for $60-70, they’re deluding themselves.
It's interesting because we're 2 years in a row where the TGA GOTY has been a game that goes against the usual "AAAA Leviathan budget" even if they're still obviously high budget games (Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3). These games have also managed to be talked about way after their release, while many of those AAAA games ended up disappearing quickly (even during big -40% sales). Even in 2024 we can see from Steam numbers the most talked games are Palworld and Granblue. It does seem gamers are willing to try "lesser" games as long as they cover the right itch

Well, unrelated to what I wrote above but still related to the discussion at hand, there is one thing I just can't wrap my head about. I can understand these big budgets related to well known devs and popular ips, but I don't undrestand why new developers still try to push for these high budget on unproven grounds. Why was Callisto Protocol (just an example, could be Immortals of Aveum) such a big budget game when it was basically the first game the team ever did. Yes Striking Distance Studios is helmed by veterans but ultimately they are a newcomer in the industry. "Made by the creator of Dead Space" means nothing, being set in the same world as PUBG means nothing. These are just words, why would a Dead Space fan blindly buy a game set in an unrelated world simply because it looks similar.Why would a PUBG fan buy a game in a different genre only because it's set in the same world. There is nothing natural about a new game getting such a massive budget out of nowhere. Unfortunately I have to go back again to Elden Ring and BG3 but look at those 2 games:
BG3 didn't appear out of nowhere. BG3 is the culmination of what Larian learned and did with DOS2, just like DOS2 is the culmination of what they learned and did with DOS1. You can even see it with Steams' player numbers. Larian started with smaller budgets, grew their fanbase from there, they showed their fans what they could do, and then released BG3 with the aforement fans following them during all the steps (and most of all, with the fans naturally growing in numbers)
ER didn't appear out of nowhere. ER is the culmination of what From learned and did with DS3, and DS2, and DS1, and even games like BB and Sekiro. The same exact thing happened as with BG3: they started small, proved their capabilities, slowly went bigger and the fans followed because they are now a known quality
This is how things should be. It's natural, it's organic, and most of all it works. Throwing 200$m or more at a game without consideration doesn't as we have seen from all the layoffs
 

Mivey

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Amid these discussions, let's appreciate these cheeky bastards.
The name of that documentary had me confused too. To their credit, they made a documentary with the name "Grounded: Making the Last of Us" about a decade before the game from Obsidian came out, so I think they have dips on the title,

Having played TLOU Remake last year, I am not sure what about its fatalistic mushroom zombie apocalypse and misery porn is supposed to be very grounded. I guess you don't leave the ground very much, that's true.
 
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PC-tan

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Jokes on everyone, Yoko Taro is actually a ghost writer for Steller Blade, just don't tell SE. How do I Know? I made it up.


I just thought that Nier Automata really boils down to what Kojima was asking all those years ago. Can love blossom on the battle field? Except with this time it being about can Androids love each other. Do they even have souls?

We asked "Do Androids dream of electric sheep?" Those has Replicant in the story didn't they? Now we ask, "Do android f*ck? According to the Internet and all of those countless video you can watch online, clearly they can.

I read this before but I'm not sure if it's true or not. I mentioned something about in some of his work that Yoko Taro features incest. Or stuff that gives off the vibes of it at least. Nier seems to have a sister complex, 2B with 9S.

Something about it not only being about Nier but some other SE titles have some stuff like with, FFXIII has some shotacon supposedly.

Anyway. Hearing the Nier story at the concert made me realize how some of the stuff didn't really make sense, some of it did and they did explain it in better detail. Other parts made me wonder, if that's really what Happened or not. It's been years since I played the game. The thing only covers Nier Replicant √2 and Nier Automata endings A+B.



A thought had accord to me. I don't play Dragon Quest games the proper way. Usually I will grind a lot and I mean a LOOOOT. I will fight the final boss and after my third or fourth attempt of trying to beat him, I will spend the next 20+ hours grinding just to get a higher level and beat him. For context a DQ game on average takes like 20-25 hours to beat. So I'm adding an additional 20+ hours on top of that. And by doing so I am able to steam roll the final boss in maybe 5-6 turns at most.
 

Derrick01

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The name of that documentary had me confused too. To their credit, they made a documentary with the name "Grounded: Making the Last of Us" about a decade before the game from Obsidian came out, so I think they have dips on the title,

Having played TLOU Remake last year, I am not sure what about its fatalistic mushroom zombie apocalypse and misery porn is supposed to be very grounded. I guess you don't leave the ground very much, that's true.
Grounded is what the hardest difficulty in TLOU games (1 and 2) is called. It's actually extremely tense because ammo is so limited so you have to really decide how you're going to approach things and figure out how to stealthily skip certain sections so you conserve everything.
 
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Eila

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Jan 21, 2019
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I don't understand why they would want to develop a game for GBA. It's an old device and there are probably few people today that owns it today. (I probably still have mine somewhere in a box somewhere).
I wouldn't want to buy it for GBA anyway. I see that Limited Run Games will publish the physical release, so it's probably going to cost a fortune.

The positive thing is it's going to be released on modern hardware as well
I love retro shit so I love the idea. The only caveat would be the music, I think they should consider giving an option for higher quality music on the PC/Console releases.

If you liked Zwei, then I can also recommend its sequel. Arguably the last "classic" Falcom game, developed for PC as the main platform
I did play that on release. I played the original Zwei for like an hour when it came out originally, but finally got to finish it. I think Zwei II is way better,, but the original is still worth checking out.
 

dex3108

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Damn i forgot how clunky CP2077 is no matter if you play it with gamepad or with M&K.
 

Line

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Jokes on everyone, Yoko Taro is actually a ghost writer for Steller Blade, just don't tell SE. How do I Know? I made it up.


I just thought that Nier Automata really boils down to what Kojima was asking all those years ago. Can love blossom on the battle field? Except with this time it being about can Androids love each other. Do they even have souls?

We asked "Do Androids dream of electric sheep?" Those has Replicant in the story didn't they? Now we ask, "Do android f*ck? According to the Internet and all of those countless video you can watch online, clearly they can.
Fun thing is, Nier Automata doesn't answer those questions, Nier did.
They do, because humans have gone extinct three times over, and in universe, their bodies and even their souls and hopes to possess artificial bodies have been destroyed thousands of years ago.
The world of Nier has never known anything but artificial, robotic beings that can be give birth (in some form) since the very end of the first game. But this was largely unused, except arguably with Emil and what he became.

I read this before but I'm not sure if it's true or not. I mentioned something about in some of his work that Yoko Taro features incest. Or stuff that gives off the vibes of it at least. Nier seems to have a sister complex, 2B with 9S.

Something about it not only being about Nier but some other SE titles have some stuff like with, FFXIII has some shotacon supposedly.
Incest is the bare minimum for Yoko Taro. In the same continuity to Nier, Drakengard contains just that, and a lot of rape, and pedophilia, and cannibalism. In varying orders.
Deep down his works are supremely fucked up, even with the censorship that sometimes happened pre-release and the further retcons, like in:
Anyway. Hearing the Nier story at the concert made me realize how some of the stuff didn't really make sense, some of it did and they did explain it in better detail. Other parts made me wonder, if that's really what Happened or not. It's been years since I played the game. The thing only covers Nier Replicant √2 and Nier Automata endings A+B.
... his games are notoriously retconned to hell and back by the publisher, sometimes to make things more palatable he will write some of it, but often times, it's just bollocks added to sell copies. Nier Automata being a runaway success certainly took its toll, with very little of the post release content being consistent with the original work.
The manga and the novels are complete and utter nonsense that are completely opposed to much of the original world building, and only exist to retcon a lot of game elements that happened purely because of budget constraints... with their little explanations being seen as not enough.

Which is also why we haven't seen any new project materializing in all those years, I'm sure the conflicts must have been spectacular at SE. Taro already got burned a lot with the Drakengard series and the direction it was forced in, and even the mobile game got him in hot water for his decisions (and now it's dead anyway), let alone his other projects being shitcanned left and right.

Nier Automata is probably the best example of why you don't dig too far into spin offs and side projects, they're not here to expand the lore and reveal more, they're only here for IP holders to make some pocket change by licensing or commissioning fanfiction.
 
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Derrick01

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So apparently now even day 1 gamepass games are going to end too. This is the part that surprises me out of all thsi stuff. I figured they would keep GP as is because it's the ONLY advantage xbox will have after they go multiplat.

At the same time it's not really that shocking. I know I was saying from the start that dumping $200m games on a sub service day 1 isn't practical long term. You're either going to have to make everything an endless live service to keep people subbed or they'll just rent a month of GP and play the game and drop it. The logistics of it never made sense at all but so many people (including the media) mocked people who questioned the service up until about a year ago.
 
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Censored

I didn't delete that post!. Get my post back!.
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According with some sources there aren't crackers working on DENUVO at moment.
All games with DRM Denuvo can’t be pirated until developer removes it
 

yuraya

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So apparently now even day 1 gamepass games are going to end too. This is the part that surprises me out of all thsi stuff. I figured they would keep GP as is because it's the ONLY advantage xbox will have after they go multiplat.

At the same time it's not really that shocking. I know I was saying from the start that dumping $200m games on a sub service day 1 isn't practical long term. You're either going to have to make everything an endless live service to keep people subbed or they'll just rent a month of GP and play the game and drop it. The logistics of it never made sense at all but so many people (including the media) mocked people who questioned the service up until about a year ago.

Really feels like someone at Microsoft is pressing the nuke button. No way its Phil Spencer imo. They are gonna fuck around and kill off the brand. There are estimates they have 33 million subscribers for GP and bring in billions every year from service revenue. I don't really see how that is not sustainable. Its very sustainable they just want more money. Its always more and more. Never enough.

And they are gonna kills off hardware business as well which will drastically hurt their service revenue. They are gambling hard because they assume they can just keep growing GP # without consoles. But they should probably create new avenues and grow them first before killing off their most important avenue for people to subscribe. Its all a hard risk because there is no guarantees. They've conditioned millions of their fans to not buy 70$ games at launch...so the idea that those people will start buying them is a big risk.

Even if their next gen console is just a 100$ cloud box there is no guarantee people will keep subscribing like they did with X/S.

Maybe this is the goal for them. They are nuking all this just to be a giant publisher. They see it as a win no matter what. So their new competition will be EA, Take-Two, Embracer, Ubisoft, SEGA, Square etc. And they will be able to compete much easier with them unlike Sony/Nintendo.
 

yuraya

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C'mon Valve, now announce a new Steam Machine and we are all set
What if all of this is happening with Xbox because they know Valve is about to enter the fray.....

But joking aside I really do think Valve has the opportunity to do something big with a new console.

Honestly not just a console but an entire trifecta. They should push out a new VR headset + Deck 2 + High end living room console. Bundle all 3 as well lol.

Proton and SteamOS makes it all work for Valve too. There is not a lot of risk even if they are overpriced a bit.
 

Mivey

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C'mon Valve, now announce a new Steam Machine and we are all set
That would basically be a mini PC with off the shelf hardware, at which point what's even the point for Valve to build anything? APUs from AMD don't scale up to a point where it can power 4K gaming, you would need external GPUs, and that's literal a bog standard PC at that point. At that point Valve is just spending money to subsidise normal PCs. I don't see them going that route.

So maybe if the Steam Machine is more meant as an entry point and targets 1080p or 1440p gaming, then the custom APU thing might scale up and still hit decent (60+ FPS) on modern games. I guess the rational there might be that recent trends have made the entry point to PC gaming too expensive and might thus endanger Valve's bottom line. OTOH, this would basically turn Valve into a major, major hardware company that would outright compete with ASUS, MSI, and the rest, and I don't really see them being interested in that. They could afford it, I just don't see that as an exciting thing that anyone at Valve would care about. And Valve seems to be pretty much be run based on how many people working there care about something. Nothing else. If they cared about the bottom line, they'd axe their entire VR department over night. That's never making money
 

Dinjoralo

None shall remember those who do not fight.
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To think this might have all been avoided if Microsoft didn't completely cock up that app store of theirs. Oh well, reap what you sow and all that.

C'mon Valve, now announce a new Steam Machine and we are all set
It's the perfect time to do this, honestly. All the pieces weren't in place ten years ago, but they are now!
 

Derrick01

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Really feels like someone at Microsoft is pressing the nuke button. No way its Phil Spencer imo. They are gonna fuck around and kill off the brand. There are estimates they have 33 million subscribers for GP and bring in billions every year from service revenue. I don't really see how that is not sustainable. Its very sustainable they just want more money. Its always more and more. Never enough.

And they are gonna kills off hardware business as well which will drastically hurt their service revenue. They are gambling hard because they assume they can just keep growing GP # without consoles. But they should probably create new avenues and grow them first before killing off their most important avenue for people to subscribe. Its all a hard risk because there is no guarantees. They've conditioned millions of their fans to not buy 70$ games at launch...so the idea that those people will start buying them is a big risk.

Even if their next gen console is just a 100$ cloud box there is no guarantee people will keep subscribing like they did with X/S.

Maybe this is the goal for them. They are nuking all this just to be a giant publisher. They see it as a win no matter what. So their new competition will be EA, Take-Two, Embracer, Ubisoft, SEGA, Square etc. And they will be able to compete much easier with them unlike Sony/Nintendo.
Yeah there's people theorizing some kind of internal fight at MS between the gamer types and the money counters, there doesn't seem to be a coherent strategy right now. Guess we'll see what happens at this briefing next week but right now all the leaks coming out make it look like they have no idea what they're doing.

If anything this should be another warning against one company gobbling everything up (as if the embracer implosion wasn't enough of a message). It's all good until suddenly it isn't and then there's bodies left behind in the chaos that follows. All it takes is 1 bad luck event or a getting a new boss and them having a change of strategy to upend everything.
 

yuraya

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Yeah there's people theorizing some kind of internal fight at MS between the gamer types and the money counters, there doesn't seem to be a coherent strategy right now. Guess we'll see what happens at this briefing next week but right now all the leaks coming out make it look like they have no idea what they're doing.

If anything this should be another warning against one company gobbling everything up (as if the embracer implosion wasn't enough of a message). It's all good until suddenly it isn't and then there's bodies left behind in the chaos that follows. All it takes is 1 bad luck event or a getting a new boss and them having a change of strategy to upend everything.
Yea it feels more n more like it was a giant mistake for Microsoft to buy Activision. They should have instead just picked up a couple more big studios and called it a day. Go into next gen with your cornered market of WRPGs, FPS and other traditional singleplayer games franchises. Push Gamepass to be the Netflix of gaming.

Instead they bought Activision and pretty much forced to transform their entire company into what Activision Blizzard was. A giant factory of releasing big GaaS games every year and endlessly supporting them to squeeze as much $$$ as you can. And as a result they will sacrifice the core gamer in favor of this shitty GaaS driven strategy. If they kill off everything they've built over the past 2 decades it won't even hurt them that much because now they bring in so much revenue they can brush all that old stuff aside. Gaming brought in over 7 billion in revenue for them last quarter thanks to the acquisition. Now that they have a taste of that type of money their shareholders won't allow them to do anything out of the ordinary like wasting too much money on loss projects (hardware, exclusivity, GPultimate etc). I expect them to cut out all of that stuff and just be an ordinary big publisher with cloud service on the side.
 

dex3108

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Yea it feels more n more like it was a giant mistake for Microsoft to buy Activision. They should have instead just picked up a couple more big studios and called it a day. Go into next gen with your cornered market of WRPGs, FPS and other traditional singleplayer games franchises. Push Gamepass to be the Netflix of gaming.

Instead they bought Activision and pretty much forced to transform their entire company into what Activision Blizzard was. A giant factory of releasing big GaaS games every year and endlessly supporting them to squeeze as much $$$ as you can. And as a result they will sacrifice the core gamer in favor of this shitty GaaS driven strategy. If they kill off everything they've built over the past 2 decades it won't even hurt them that much because now they bring in so much revenue they can brush all that old stuff aside. Gaming brought in over 7 billion in revenue for them last quarter thanks to the acquisition. Now that they have a taste of that type of money their shareholders won't allow them to do anything out of the ordinary like wasting too much money on loss projects (hardware, exclusivity, GPultimate etc). I expect them to cut out all of that stuff and just be an ordinary big publisher with cloud service on the side.
ABK is not their issue. Bethesda is their issue. More studios that didn't bring money in some time. And by the looks of it it won't bring it unless something changes. Also not selling enough consoles is their issue.

But as I said before Sony will also have challenges sooner than later. Their top studios are spending a lot of money to deliver 1-2 games per generation of consoles. That is not sustainable. Naughty Dog shipped 3 Uncharted games and TLoU on PS3, 1 and a half Uncharted game and TLoU Part 2 on PS4 and by the looks of it just one game on PS5 (I don't count remasters and remakes). Sucker Punch, Bend Studios, Blueprint, Santa Monica, Guerrila... are all similar stories. Insomniac is their only studio that pumps games like crazy. And less and less 3rd party studios are willing to accept exclusivity.

So yeah things will change in console space sooner rather than later. At least for Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo is still managing to earn tons of money with manageable expenses.
 

Sobatronix

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Not a fan of exclusives or Xbox for that matter, but Xbox going third-party is going to change the entire gaming landscape and fully open the floodgates of Playstation having a monopoly in the console business (I'm not counting Nintendo because they're doing their own thing with their 720p games).
 

Arulan

Lizardman
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The sooner all parties realize that hardware-independent platforms are the future, the best for everyone involved. You should be able to buy the hardware you want, use the platform and services you want, and buy all the games you want. Playing video games doesn't have to be more complicated than that.

Sony and Nintendo will continue profiting from the control that operating a closed-platform affords them, until the economics change on that.

Until then though, I suppose ports from Sony on Steam, all future Xbox releases, and emulation of present-day Nintendo consoles on PC is just fine with me.
 

yuraya

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ABK is not their issue. Bethesda is their issue. More studios that didn't bring money in some time. And by the looks of it it won't bring it unless something changes. Also not selling enough consoles is their issue.

But as I said before Sony will also have challenges sooner than later. Their top studios are spending a lot of money to deliver 1-2 games per generation of consoles. That is not sustainable. Naughty Dog shipped 3 Uncharted games and TLoU on PS3, 1 and a half Uncharted game and TLoU Part 2 on PS4 and by the looks of it just one game on PS5 (I don't count remasters and remakes). Sucker Punch, Bend Studios, Blueprint, Santa Monica, Guerrila... are all similar stories. Insomniac is their only studio that pumps games like crazy. And less and less 3rd party studios are willing to accept exclusivity.

So yeah things will change in console space sooner rather than later. At least for Microsoft and Sony. Nintendo is still managing to earn tons of money with manageable expenses.
I don't think the 7 billion purchase was all that big of a deal to Microsoft. Bethesda games have long legs and they have MMOs bringing in money + a lot of future projects. They would have slowly recovered that money over time like they did with Minecraft. Gamepass would have accelerated it too.

But with a big purchase like Activision for 69 billion. That was probably so large it forced upper execs like Nadella to step in and tell Phil Spencer to fuck off with his current strategy. Phil was probably told that the quickest and safest way for them to recover that 69 billion over time is by going 3rd party. And they'll scale back any loss leading projects they have at the moment. The gaming division basically cannot have any bad performing quarters like they have chasing Sony and Nintendo the last 10 years. The acquisition forced strict moderation for the gaming division. Laying off 1900 people was the first step and now its gonna be going 3rd party. This summer Xbox event will probably be the big push for Cloud, Mobile, Call of Duty and PS5/Switch 2 announcements like crazy.
 
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dex3108

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I don't think the 7 billion purchase was all that big of a deal to Microsoft. Bethesda games have long legs and they have MMOs bringing in money + a lot of future projects. They would have slowly recovered that money over time like they did with Minecraft. Gamepass would have accelerated it too.

But with a big purchase like Activision for 69 billion. That was probably so large it forced upper execs like Nadella to step in and tell Phil Spencer to fuck off with his current strategy. Phil was probably told that the quickest and safest way for them to recover that 69 billion over time is by going 3rd party. And they'll scale back any loss leading projects they have at the moment. The gaming division basically cannot have any bad performing quarters like they have chasing Sony and Nintendo the last 10 years. The acquisition forced strict moderation for the gaming division. Laying off 1900 people was the first step and now its gonna be going 3rd party. This summer Xbox event will probably be the big push for Cloud, Mobile, Call of Duty and PS5/Switch 2 announcements like crazy.
Again Sony will soon be in similar situation. Let's do some napkin math. Naughty Dog has 400+ employees. If we take Patcher $100K yearly salary per employee and bump it up a bit due to inflation and studio location to $120K we get $48M yearly expenses just to pay salary to ND. Add to that various other expenses like electricity and water bills, property taxes and benefits ND offers employees just to run ND could cost Sony up to $55+M. Now let's see if it takes ND 5 years to ship single game that is $275M just for ND studio expenses. Add to that at least $150M for outsourcing and other expenses (acting talent, composers, localization...) and at least $100M for marketing of a big budget premier Sony release and that is over $500M to deliver single game. If we take best case scenario and Sony sells all their copies via PSN where they keep all the money at $70 per copy they need to sell 8M copies to just break even. And TLoU Part 2 last numbers at mid 2022 were 10M lifetime copies sold. That is set the end of the generation where they have most users.

That is not sustainable and things will need to change. MS is looking at challenges like that now that they have sh*t ton of studios like ND and numbers simply don't add up. Something need to change. Especially because each new gen of consoles is basically reboot of the userbase. And things change drastically in those 6-8 years between consoles. More people are buying consoles to play Fortnite these days than 1st party exclusives.
 
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