Do I read that correctly as Sony saying there will be no major release from them until March 2025 ?It's time to pump out those PC ports Sony!!!
And you don’t need to pay 80-120$ to watch that movie.Here is the current problem. Some AAA games are getting to the point where their budgets are like a movies (and marketing to boot as well).
The problem is that if I want to watch a movie I don’t need a Sony Blu-Ray player to watch a Sony movie. Hell I don’t even need that sort of hardware to watch their movies. I can just stream them. So they can make their money back across a wider spread of people.
The fact is there is very little difference between the base of the hardware (outside of the super duper magical ram/SSD in Sony hardware, I suppose) just seems mad that we don’t have a unified format like the DVD/Blu-Ray standards.
But these companies that run at the cutting edge of technology can be so old fashioned at times.
I think it's a save anywhere system, and only the PS1 release had save points at certain places?I suppose they didn’t change the save system in Tomb Raider ? I remember some PC journo groaning at the time. You can only save at certain points or something ?
I suppose they didn’t change the save system in Tomb Raider ? I remember some PC journo groaning at the time. You can only save at certain points or something ?
I always believed that consoles had to go this way, it would be the only way to have a physical game collection, but with the gaming companies not even wanting physical anymore it might be less of an issue. Either way we will just have one player on the market or we will have different service providers.Here is the current problem. Some AAA games are getting to the point where their budgets are like a movies (and marketing to boot as well).
The problem is that if I want to watch a movie I don’t need a Sony Blu-Ray player to watch a Sony movie. Hell I don’t even need that sort of hardware to watch their movies. I can just stream them. So they can make their money back across a wider spread of people.
The fact is there is very little difference between the base of the hardware (outside of the super duper magical ram/SSD in Sony hardware, I suppose) just seems mad that we don’t have a unified format like the DVD/Blu-Ray standards.
But these companies that run at the cutting edge of technology can be so old fashioned at times.
I don’t remember that much. It may even be a case of save system changing for some games and not others ?I think it's a save anywhere system, and only the PS1 release had save points at certain places?
As far as I remember, the PlayStation versions of the old TR games indeed used the save crystal system, where you could only save on certain points, but the PC versions had a "save anywhere, how often you want" system; and this remaster also has the latter.I don’t remember that much. It may even be a case of save system changing for some games and not others ?
I clearly remember some journo cursing the save point system, but as to which game…
If they want to release games of the caliber of the previous decade and not be seen as releasing inferior products, they would need to close a few studios. 3 Game Studios with a 500 million budget to claim "superiority" is better to manage risk and expectations than 6-8 Game Studios.Can’t argue there. For their market to be sustainable they need to scale back budgets or expand audience.
But part of the first party allure is they’re prestige games. It used to be that said prestige games did not need to be profitable because they were hardware differentiators, but I think those days are past given the size of the budgets.
And if they do scale back budgets, the fans will cry foul. So releasing outside the captive audience is the next step. Alas, the fans will also cry foul at that too.
But I just don’t see a way that this stuff is sustainable in the long term otherwise. And even then it’s quite dicey.
I think fanboys need to ask themselves a question. Do they love the plastic black box, or the games?
PS5 has no game!Do I read that correctly as Sony saying there will be no major release from them until March 2025 ?
No but seriously, I'm a little dazed to read one of the top players saying they won't release any 'major existing franchise titles' until next year.PS5 has no game!
Immortals of Aveum had a budget of $125 million and I'd hazard to call that AAA. That's not too far off from Barbie's budget of $145 million. Spider-Man 2's budget was $300 million which isn't too far off from Avatar 2's budget of $350-400 million, and only one of those will gross >$2 billion.Here is the current problem. Some AAA games are getting to the point where their budgets are like a movies (and marketing to boot as well).
The problem is that if I want to watch a movie I don’t need a Sony Blu-Ray player to watch a Sony movie. Hell I don’t even need that sort of hardware to watch their movies. I can just stream them. So they can make their money back across a wider spread of people.
The fact is there is very little difference between the base of the hardware (outside of the super duper magical ram/SSD in Sony hardware, I suppose) just seems mad that we don’t have a unified format like the DVD/Blu-Ray standards.
But these companies that run at the cutting edge of technology can be so old fashioned at times.
About this, I remember like what now feels a long time ago. I think it was ubisoft (but it might be another big publisher) that wanted as much data as possible from how their games were played so they could see what players like and specially what "engages" them more. So they could use that more on their next games.The Insomniac leaks showed the AAA market is unsustainable. Budgets are too high and dev cycles are too long. There is a legitimate risk of starting a project and it failing simply because tastes have changed during development (i.e. Suicide Squad).
Ever higher fidelity of assets, more and more moving parts, animation being ever more involved and voice acting that's needed and so on. Add to that the focus on open worlds, and you are a situation when the basic iteration time, to get from one version of the game to the next takes 10 times longer. At the same time you need to higher more people to get all that done in reasonable time. So you increase both the dev time, and the number of people working on it. And thus costs go up fast.On that note, I was wondering what exactly are the culprits behind these cost and dev time ballooning.
What explains how we came to point A (whenever it was, like PS2, 3 or 4 ?) to point B aka nothing is sustainable anymore ?
I mean, I can get it for big open worlds, to an extent.
So, death by a thousand cuts.Ever higher fidelity of assets, more and more moving parts, animation being ever more involved and voice acting that's needed and so on. Add to that the focus on open worlds, and you are a situation when the basic iteration time, to get from one version of the game to the next takes 10 times longer. At the same time you need to higher more people to get all that done in reasonable time. So you increase both the dev time, and the number of people working on it. And thus costs go up fast.
And iteration time is key, that's how you get a game that is good and fun to play. Basically, gaming works by people trying out some idea, seeing if it 's fun (once they implemented it) then realising that something doesn't work and trying again. As you increase the fidelity and scope, the iteration time balloons.
The Insomniac leaks showed the AAA market is unsustainable. Budgets are too high and dev cycles are too long. There is a legitimate risk of starting a project and it failing simply because tastes have changed during development (i.e. Suicide Squad). Nintendo had the right idea about having more modest budgets and dev times, but even they aren't immune to long dev cycles (i.e. 6 years between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom).
Publishers are going to have to face the fact the market as a whole does not care much about prestige cinematic games. There are games that have blown up, like Palworld and Lethal Company, that are not exactly lookers. Roblox, arguably the biggest games platform in the world, looks like it does.
Immortals of Aveum had a budget of $125 million and I'd hazard to call that AAA. That's not too far off from Barbie's budget of $145 million. Spider-Man 2's budget was $300 million which isn't too far off from Avatar 2's budget of $350-400 million, and only one of those will gross >$2 billion.
The AAA industry is sleepwalking off a cliff, but I get the pride aspect and wanting your work to be as good as possible so it will be hard to convince people to cut back on spending.
I'm afraid we're entering a "damned if you do damned if you don't" phase. Developers/publishers want game prices to go up but in doing so they are spending more on games so the product can "justify" being 70 or even 80 bucks. On the other hand this ends up increasing dev time, and so budgets, which feeds into the need to exctract as much money from customers as possible. But lowering graphical fidelity only works if you also lower the price (which publishers are trying to avoid as it hurts the ip price perception, see Ubisoft) and there is also no reason to believe the game will actually come out faster (just look at how much time it's taking for Silksong or Deltarune to come out)There needs to be some type of correction for AAA game dev but I can't think of anything that can be done at this point.
Because Square won't exist in 10 to 15 years10 to 15 years from now there will be no exclusives anymore
Except for Square Enix games.
I mean, one less party member can only mean one less character stupidly paraphrasing the other ones.
do it! you can play with PossiblyPuddingI'm really tempted to buy Helldivers 2, but as someone who don't play with randos, at least with a mic, I'm not convinced by the wisdom of the purchase.
It is hilarious to me that even Sony's president recognizes the synergy and network effect that comes with multiplatform releases, yet the geniuses at Square are still banging on Sony's door going like:10 to 15 years from now there will be no exclusives anymore
Except for Square Enix games.
I love PossiblyPudding but scheduling a trans Atlantic session is not the easiest. I'm not getting younger and I tend to drop like a fly around 10pm, so yeah. And I don't know if I would fit in his schedule.
i'm sure you'd work something outI love PossiblyPudding but scheduling a trans Atlantic session is not the easiest. And I don't know if I would fit in his schedule.
But OBVIOUSLY if I buy Helldivers 2 Pudding will be the first to know ! That was implicit.
Yeah I miss our gaming sessions. I kind of live together with my gf so finding time for gaming is tricky.I love PossiblyPudding but scheduling a trans Atlantic session is not the easiest. I'm not getting younger and I tend to drop like a fly around 10pm, so yeah. And I don't know if I would fit in his schedule.
But OBVIOUSLY if I buy Helldivers 2 Pudding will be the first to know ! That was implicit.
By the way, it's really unfortunate that Meta Co-Op didn't gel with more people. I loved Gauntlets with 4 players, for example.
Back 4 Blood was a great time.Yeah I miss our gaming sessions. I kind of live together with my gf so finding time for gaming is tricky.
I think this is ironically another one of those things that indirectly comes from the ballooning budgets and objectives, but in a different way than the "spending money" part.I mean, one less party member can only mean one less character stupidly paraphrasing the other ones.
There is hope.
Plz.
The state of games these days, dev are absolutely terrified to let their players actually play their games. Even in fucking Anno, I'm trying to understand the supply and demand panel, I'm in slow mo mode (because active pause is somehow a big no no) and still, yap yap yap.
'yap yap yap, yap yap yap, yap yap yap'.
I will soon begin missing actually playing videogames. While playing videogames.
Incredible.
I am assuming it is full real-time Metropolis light transport. Gotta future proof for the RTX 6090Talking about Falcom games, yesterday I implemented a world first (AFAIK) in-game graphics setting in Daybreak (will be in the English release).
(Before anyone gets too excited, it's probably not something most people will care about; but I've wanted to do it for over a decade)
I'm planning to buy it as well when the frequent crashes are patched. I'll be happy to team up with you.I'm really tempted to buy Helldivers 2, but as someone who don't play with randos, at least with a mic, I'm not convinced by the wisdom of the purchase.
Oh man Eastward is on my wishlist but this is seriously putting me off. There are games where I love just talking and talking to NPCs mind you, I'm a relatively new convert to CRPGs for example and those are full of that but the more forced and railroaded it is the harder it is I find it to care.I think this is ironically another one of those things that indirectly comes from the ballooning budgets and objectives, but in a different way than the "spending money" part.
All the text, endless voice acted parts, "guided" cut scenes and other things like this (forced walking sections, etc) are part of that need to have "real lore" and "real story" and to "engage the player" all the time.
To take an indie example, I played a bit of Eastward - looks like a pretty pixel art Zelda game!
And it starts with effectively 2h of cut scenes aping The last of us. And then it's not a Zelda like, because it's completely linear with no exploration, and there's a bottomless amount of dialogue in towns and mountains of NPCs to talk to, but it's not like they actually add anything to the gameplay - on top of having constant cut scenes (that thankfully were patched to allow you to go at 2x speed...).
It's just miserable, let me play the fucking game, let me see tutorials in convenient little boxes with hyperlinks on needed terms - like we had decades ago! You don't even need story in videogames, but if you really want to add one (likely to flatter your ego considering the average writing quality of the "Citizen Kanes of videogames" as some journos would call them), be curt and show, don't tell.
This is devastating. The guy was trapped at Konami for so many years, finally gets out and runs a Kickstarter that proves how much his games have meant to fans and the no doesn't get to see it released. Just tragic.