Community MetaSteam | April 2024 - Definitely there's no rest for the wicked.

[Paul]

Regarding Fallout (saw all 8 episodes):

When Bethesda acquired the IP and decided to set their games on the east coast, I was like, great, they can do what they want in their playground, even if they mess up the lore, they cannot do too much harm since it is across the continent.
And then they decided to set this TV show on west coast...place of Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and New Vegas. So I was both excited (I will see NCR! and maybe some other locations I know and love!) and apprehensive (they will fuck it up, won't they? This is hollywood after all!).

Well,

Spoiler

I did not expect them to literally obliterate the setting of games I grew up with in nuclear fire and effectively set their development to pre-Fallout 1 level, I can tell you that.

If I never played original games and only started with FO3, I would probably be a pretty big fan of the show.
Technically, the show is well made - mostly good actors (especially Goggins and Purnell), good CGI, good pacing. Script is hit and miss, some really questionable character behavior and some plot holes, the way they made BoS knight utterly pathetic was lame, etc, but overall, it is a fun watch.

But yeah their treatment of original game's setting is kinda unforgivable for me, to the point where I am tempted to write it off as (personal) non-canon, eventhough I had fun watching it. Quite paradoxical.

 

[TheGreenArrow]

My steam credit from my new monitor finally came in and I instantly grabbed Withering Rooms. Pumped as hell.
Thinking about grabbing Children of the Sun too.
Too many games!!!

 

[QFNS]

Children of the Sun seems to have Neon White vibes. Despite the dev complaining on Twitter or whatever, it seems like a cool score-based, make the best run you can, type thing.

 

[Censored]

It's the same thing that happened with the Dodo, tourists are going to drive it to extinction. /S

But yeah it's sad though. What's even more messed up is that a lot of those people aren't ever going to actually play the games since they are in Japanese. From what I have seen even Retro game corp bought some which is sad. In the video they even mentioned how they went to smaller places to pick up the games.

This is messed up since now even less people are going to be able to play these games. I wonder if this means that even more people will turn towards emulation and roms. There are already people that do that in Japan, so I'm guessing the numbers will only grow over the years since it will not be as easily in the future to just go to a retro store and buy a console for cheap and also buy cheap games. They are slowly turning into the ugly mess that is American retro game stores.

In the future a CIB copy of Pocketmonster Red will cost you over ¥10,000 when previously it was under ¥3,000 a few years ago. Even when it was ¥3,000 yen it Japan it was well over $100 in the US just for the cartridge alone.



I have a lot of different thoughts towards this but I just think the end result is not good.


Years from now a lot of older "classic" Japanese games may well be forgotten? Which technically already seems to be the case for stuff like Japanese films. A lot of people don't even seem to know who Akira Kurosawa is. Only Weebs and Otakus outside of Japan will seem to remember this things in the next 30 years from now. It's now year 2050, Yoko Taro is now passed away, do people remember Drag-on Dragoon. They didn't bring the series back it was never released digitally and those old retro copies are now horded up in the homes of collectors.

"the great future of physical gaming™ "

People usually blames about digital future (present) but everybody who is in retro knows what's going on with skyrocket prices for physical copies from older systems. Gladly there's a digital downloadable pirated copy about those games on internet and anybody who is really interested in play those games can.

 

[PC-tan]

"the great future of physical gaming™ "

People usually blames about digital future (present) but everybody who is in retro knows what's going on with skyrocket prices for physical copies from older systems. Gladly there's a digital downloadable pirated copy about those games on internet and anybody who is really interested in play those games can.

This is why I find the whole "all digital future" thing kinda funny. When ever a game gets delisted you always see people go back to the whole and this is why physical is better and this is why I'm glad that I bought a physical copy. Why are you glad that you bought a physical copy, is it to actually play the game? Because you can still do that and if by some chance they took the servers down even if you have a physical copy you won't be able to play it since the servers are down (The Crew by Ubisoft). They seem to think that if it's delisted that you can no longer play that game at all. What they are really saying is that they are glad that they bought a physical copy because now they can possibly make a profit from selling that game.


It's a really shame that they people buying these games have no real intention of playing them in some cases and only buy them because they prices will keep going up in the future and to just have in their collection. And nothing more.

The whole artificial inflation is something else though. And I'm at least glad that people were able to crack down on the high end stuff. And people lost a lot of money because of it. Which I think serves them right for their behavior.







------------------
I wonder what the future for Switch 2 will look like. It seems that they are going to try to get more AAA games, but I'm guessing that this may potentially be more of getting older AAA games and not so much of getting newer ones. Since some of the newer games may still be too demanding even for the Switch 2, and that's even if it uses DLSS and other Nvidia tech. So it's trying to get stuff like RDR2 and FFVII Remake trilogy on the Switch 2 among a lot of other games. Since a lot of other games are already going multiplatform to begin with so there is not really as much need of a AAA partners thing, unless somehow Nintendo is trying to buy AAA timed exclusivity for some games like Monster Hunter, but that would be about the only real case and they would need to spend a few million to achieve that each time.

 

[Censored]

I'm surprised Redemption of Li Wei got Steam's green light but others don't.

LOL, the game is in incredibly bad taste, search for it on your own good.

 

[Derrick01]

I wonder what the future for Switch 2 will look like. It seems that they are going to try to get more AAA games, but I'm guessing that this may potentially be more of getting older AAA games and not so much of getting newer ones.

Yes it'll be the same it always is with nintendo. Every gen we go through the same cycle where people think the next nintendo system will get everything and then reality hits and it barely gets anything.

Switch 2 is going to be somewhere between a base ps4 and ps4 pro, it's not getting many ps5 level games. I'd like to say I hope people for once don't repeat the cycle but I've already seen people on reddit and era acting like it's going to be some super machine that'll get every port ever. It's madness watching the same cycle always repeat and no one ever learning from it.

 

[lashman]

 

[Arsene]

Children of the Sun seems to have Neon White vibes. Despite the dev complaining on Twitter or whatever, it seems like a cool score-based, make the best run you can, type thing.

Are you talking about this?


Because he isn't the dev.

 

[STHX]

More Desert Strike but indie

 

[Blu]

Devious Deckbuilders

Ante up! This bundle of ingenious deck builders includes games like Book of Hours, Dungeon Drafters, and more! Your purchase helps support Cool Effect.

www.humblebundle.com

 

[Censored]

this "forever EGS exclusive" game is 1$ sale on Fanatical (for Steam):

Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition | PC Steam Game | Fanatical

In Oddworld: Soulstorm Enhanced Edition join the revolution as...

www.fanatical.com

 

[「Echo」]

Speaking of Fallout, today I learned you can mod Fallout 4 on Steam deck.

Guess I found one of my summer games for this year.

 

[fantomena]

 

[yuraya]

Final Fantasy is a dead franchise.

FF17 needs to be a roguelike survival game mixed with soulslike elements.

Also bring on the remakes of 6, 8 and 9.

And make them exclusive to the Switch 2.

 

[Cacher]

Wants to sell Final Fantasy? Make it multiplatform. It is that simple.

 

[low-G]

I wonder how much of the drop off is people like me who still haven't finished the original episode and/or those that just want the 'complete' game before diving in.

It's so much easier to enjoy a full planned story, like I did with FF7 in the day.

Regarding Fallout (saw all 8 episodes):

When Bethesda acquired the IP and decided to set their games on the east coast, I was like, great, they can do what they want in their playground, even if they mess up the lore, they cannot do too much harm since it is across the continent.
And then they decided to set this TV show on west coast...place of Fallout 1, Fallout 2 and New Vegas. So I was both excited (I will see NCR! and maybe some other locations I know and love!) and apprehensive (they will fuck it up, won't they? This is hollywood after all!).

Well,

Spoiler

I did not expect them to literally obliterate the setting of games I grew up with in nuclear fire and effectively set their development to pre-Fallout 1 level, I can tell you that.

If I never played original games and only started with FO3, I would probably be a pretty big fan of the show.
Technically, the show is well made - mostly good actors (especially Goggins and Purnell), good CGI, good pacing. Script is hit and miss, some really questionable character behavior and some plot holes, the way they made BoS knight utterly pathetic was lame, etc, but overall, it is a fun watch.

But yeah their treatment of original game's setting is kinda unforgivable for me, to the point where I am tempted to write it off as (personal) non-canon, eventhough I had fun watching it. Quite paradoxical.

I haven't watched any of it yet, and I may not, but you can't really consider anything canon these days. I enjoyed Picard season 3 but there's no way that Star Trek TNG projected into the future looks anything like the events leading up to and including Picard. It's fanfiction.

 

[yuraya]

I wonder how much of the drop off is people like me who still haven't finished the original episode and/or those that just want the 'complete' game before diving in.

They definitely made a mistake by announcing and confirming the game will be a 3 parter.

I also didn't finish the remake because they announced this being a 3 parter around the time the PC release happened. It was indeed a turnoff. Plus it was really hot that summer and I just didn't want to kill my pc.

But yea they should of kept quiet and built up on the mystique around rebirth. Make people think its wrapping up.

I think I will pass on Rebirth as well until the final part releases. I like Final Fantasy but these stories aren't Lord of the Rings to be stretched out across so many games.

They sunk a lot of money into this passion project tho. Give them props but if the bag they are getting from Sony isn't cutting it I wonder if part 3 will be scaled back. They will probably never attempt this again going forward. At best I see X remake getting 2 big parts but this was stupid ambitious by them. These type of games need to be selling 15-20 million in this day n age for it to make sense.

 

[Derrick01]

Wants to sell Final Fantasy? Make it multiplatform. It is that simple.

That's a bandaid on a gaping wound at this point, it wouldn't do much to stop whatever is going on here. I mean sure they should do that but there's very clearly something deeply wrong when a game of that high quality and reviews is selling worse than other exclusives that came out on smaller ps5 install bases than this.

They sunk a lot of money into this passion project tho. Give them props but if the bag they are getting from Sony isn't cutting it I wonder if part 3 will be scaled back.

Unlikely at this point. They've been working on it since 2022 and we just found out last night the story is already done and was finished in the last couple of months, so they're neck deep in this now.

 

[dex3108]

Funniest part is that Square is so stupid that they take money from Sony for 12 (FFXVI)/3 (FFVII Rebirth) month exclusivity and then don't have PC release ready for release for months after that so basically giving Sony free exclusivity. They are that dumb.

 

[MegaApple]

Didn't knew that Karamati Damacy Creator, Keita Takahashi had a new game in works.

 

[Cacher]

That's a bandaid on a gaping wound at this point, it wouldn't do much to stop whatever is going on here. I mean sure they should do that but there's very clearly something deeply wrong when a game of that high quality and reviews is selling worse than other exclusives that came out on smaller ps5 install bases than this.

I think SQEX just have this bad reputation due to receiving exclusivity money from Sony, and there are many, many people who are waiting for the game to launch on PC. Their commercial strategy is honestly a mess since a few years ago.

 

[「Echo」]

It certainly doesn't help that it's a remake, split into 3 parts, that won't end until 2028 and will likely cross into 2029 with DLC and "Complete editions."

Rebirth is also a sequel. Which means it's receptive audience is limited to those who bought Pt. 1.

And I'm also sure there is a chunk of folks who just aren't interested in their old-timey JRPG turning into an Action-RPG. Isn't that like the biggest complaints against FF these days? For FFXV they even patched in that "wait mode" battle system.

 

[Alexandros]

I don't have any investment in the Final Fantasy franchise but it's fascinating seeing all the creative ways Square Enix has found to shoot itself in the foot.

 

[Paul]

I am looking forward to trying out Final Fantasy 7. When all three games are out. On PC.

And I am looking forward to trying Final Fantasy 16. When it is out on PC. On sale (on principle, I do not like buying old, delayed games full price).

 

[kio]

Wait... people actually play final fantasy, or basically every japanese game, for the story? Seriously?

Let me help you all and save you 70€ from every future release:
- The protagonist team, which is a ragtag team of teenagers and humanoid/hybrid animals, save the world and kill god with the power of friendship.

There's also a high chance of anime T&A but you already know that because that's the real reason you play those games.

 

[Cacher]

Apparently a hentai developer turned the Yakuza cabaret club minigame into a game with management sim, VN and other minigames added on top of it.

NSFW

 

[Censored]

BUNNY GARDEN releases in few weeks on Steam (on Switch this month, april 18th). : P.

 

[curi0usBystander]

Funniest part is that Square is so stupid that they take money from Sony for 12 (FFXVI)/3 (FFVII Rebirth) month exclusivity and then don't have PC release ready for release for months after that so basically giving Sony free exclusivity. They are that dumb.

6 actually, and if we take them at their word they didn't start working on the port until after the exclusivity was up.

 

[Li Kao]

There's also a high chance of anime T&A but you already know that because that's the real reason you play those games.

No.

Apparently a hentai developer turned the Yakuza cabaret club minigame into a game with management sim, VN and other minigames added on top of it.

NSFW

In my veins.

 

[Arc]

Remake shipped 3.5 million copies in 3 days and 5 million in around 4 months. At best you're looking at 2-2.5 million for Rebirth which means it's probably sold less than Dragon's Dogma 2 at this point.

Granted it's not the fairest comparison as Remake released during peak COVID lockdowns, but those aren't pretty numbers. Being exclusive to PS5 and being a direct sequel to a game that had a mixed reception did it no favors. I'd also wager a lot of the nostalgia audience peaced out after Remake, got their fill and won't return for Rebirth and part 3.

 

[Li Kao]

I'm still in the camp saying that after all this time people are forgetting what even is a good Final Fantasy. Or even what a Final Fantasy is.
Square doesn't know either, apparently.

It's much more troubling than bad sales if you ask me. They don't have a template to fall back to and play it safe, anymore.

 

[thekeats1999]

It's going to be an interesting year for FF. Usually with the release of a new expansion on XIV there is a major boost for them. However Dawntrail is in an unusual position. Endwalker finished of a 10 year storyline. Dawntrail is the begining of a new multi-part storyline. It's also the first post COVID expansion (and the main reason I started was due to having some free time during COVID). There isn't all the streamers there that where leading into Endwalker.

Endwalker itself was an odd release as well. the main bulk of the content was great and it was an excellent end to the story line they have been working on through all of thos expansions. However the end game content was lacklustre. I enjoyed the storylines for the both the patch content and the raids. But the content itself became too easy too quickly. There was no Bozja/Eureka and the relic weapons over compensated on the grind by being just buy the items with no real challenge to them.

It's left a section of fans unsure if they are going to return, or at least return immediately, for the next expansion.

So I don't think the MMO is going to be as big a cash cow for them as it usually is, although it may get boosted by all the Xbox players that have joined. But I also think the release of Dawntrail will impact any potential release of 16/7R. Then again this is square we are talking about. They may well just drop all three in the same week.

 

[Yoshi]

The Council - Complete Season is 90% off ($1.49 USD):

 

[Line]

Wait... people actually play final fantasy, or basically every japanese game, for the story? Seriously?

Let me help you all and save you 70€ from every future release:
- The protagonist team, which is a ragtag team of teenagers and humanoid/hybrid animals, save the world and kill god with the power of friendship.

There's also a high chance of anime T&A but you already know that because that's the real reason you play those games.

That's not really Final Fantasy's MO though.
Not that nebulous concept of godhood don't appear in the franchise, but it's almost always represented by crystals or something equivalent, and you normally fight to keep them ongoing against exterior threats.
Especially true in FF7, where you certainly don't fight "god" at all.

That's more in line with Shin Megami Tensei, where killing literal deities is always a least part of the game.

 

[STHX]

I'd also wager a lot of the nostalgia audience peaced out after Remake, got their fill and won't return for Rebirth and part 3.

There is also the fact that, you know, if a big FFVII fan bought a PS4 to play Remake day one (let's say 300 bucks in total) he is now expected to pay 500 bucks (plus the game price) to play Rebirth day one, and that's a pretty big thing to ask for! And that's without talking about how the story is still in part 2 out of 3
Hell, if part 3 comes out in 3 years (so in 2027) there is a serious chance it could release on PS6 too! 3 whole console generations at full price to get the full story is completely insane! At this point it's so much easier and cheaper to simply wait for all 3 games to release on Steam and buy them there

 

[Hektor]

It certainly doesn't help that it's a remake, split into 3 parts, that won't end until 2028 and will likely cross into 2029 with DLC and "Complete editions."

Rebirth is also a sequel. Which means it's receptive audience is limited to those who bought Pt. 1.

And I'm also sure there is a chunk of folks who just aren't interested in their old-timey JRPG turning into an Action-RPG. Isn't that like the biggest complaints against FF these days? For FFXV they even patched in that "wait mode" battle system.

Final fantasy 7 remake has the action combst system that actually feels the most like a final fantasy tho, compared to 15 and what I've seen of 16

 

[lashman]

what even is a good Final Fantasy

 

[Li Kao]

The internet is so thirsty today. Or it's me.
First that Yakuza Cabaret VN, and now that horrible gacha. Horrible, horrible. I'm bothered, and very hot.

DO NOT CLICK, VERY ADULT

I like the art style with hot colors, don't know if it has a name.

 

[yuraya]

Remake shipped 3.5 million copies in 3 days and 5 million in around 4 months. At best you're looking at 2-2.5 million for Rebirth which means it's probably sold less than Dragon's Dogma 2 at this point.

Granted it's not the fairest comparison as Remake released during peak COVID lockdowns, but those aren't pretty numbers. Being exclusive to PS5 and being a direct sequel to a game that had a mixed reception did it no favors. I'd also wager a lot of the nostalgia audience peaced out after Remake, got their fill and won't return for Rebirth and part 3.

Those numbers would be very bad. What are PS5 owners even doing? Are people really just playing F2P and GaaS games?

Its kind of sad. They announced 50 million consoles sold but games reviewed like this should be doing bigger numbers.

These type of results should push Sony more and more to making a handheld imo. It would justify reinvesting money in to bringing back small budget first party games that can fill these voids. Otherwise they are really just gonna be that console which coasts off third party games while releasing one big AAAA budget game every other year. There is so much risk in this strategy and so many things can go wrong. I don't get how both Xbox and Playstation aren't shifting next gen to be what Nintendo is now.

And I don't really get how big publishers are gonna justify the budgets/prices of games if software sales don't massively increase 2-3 in the coming years.

 

[Li Kao]

I should play FF13. At this point it feels more Final Fantasy than whatever we are getting these days. Completely ningen.

Spoiler

I dare say I don't naruhodo at all.

 

[MegaApple]

Reminder, hack the FF6 SNES ROM with either ROSE or TWUE patch, and play the greatest Final Fantasy game.

 

[Derrick01]

And I'm also sure there is a chunk of folks who just aren't interested in their old-timey JRPG turning into an Action-RPG. Isn't that like the biggest complaints against FF these days? For FFXV they even patched in that "wait mode" battle system.

Let's be honest this is just an extremely tiny few amount of boomers who are stuck in the 90s. They don't amount to any significant number here.

Those numbers would be very bad. What are PS5 owners even doing? Are people really just playing F2P and GaaS games?

This is all most of this industry is doing these days. I'll keep saying it until I go blue in the face, GaaS are the biggest threat to this industry's health.

We act like some other jrpg selling 1-2m is a tremendous success but those are peanut numbers in the grand scheme of things. It may be good enough for those companies now but they expect growth too, they'll expect the next one to do 2-3m and so on. But those other games aren't going to reach those heights most likely, there's a hard cap on what many of them will sell and it's 5m at most. Hell we act like games selling 10m is a huge achievement when there were games 20 years ago selling 10m copies the only difference now is today's games cost 10-100x more than they did back then.

 

[Li Kao]

Reminder, hack the FF6 SNES ROM with either ROSE or TWUE patch, and play the greatest Final Fantasy game.

What do those patches do ? Retranslation ?

Let's be honest this is just an extremely tiny few amount of boomers who are stuck in the 90s. They don't amount to any significant number here.

Problem. Those are the people still caring even a little about the brand.

 

[Nano]

wut.. I finished a game

 

[Derrick01]

Problem. Those are the people still caring even a little about the brand.

No they say they care but they only want copies of SNES games they remember from their childhood. They're an extremely bitter tiny minority that can seem loud online and they've deluded themselves into thinking a sprite, turn based jrpg would somehow outsell the current entries. They've even been using BG3's success as "proof" of this while completely ignoring that a turn based cprg is massively different from how jrpgs do turn based combat (and also the other factors that made BG3 blow up over other crpgs like full voice acting and cinematic presentation for story...which they also hate in games).

 

[Cacher]

Maybe due to my lacking experience with online games, I honestly haven't seen so many incredibly talented and passionate people in a community ever. Even the memes are actually funny. Very, very impressed by these people.

 

[Li Kao]

No they say they care but they only want copies of SNES games they remember from their childhood. They're an extremely bitter tiny minority that can seem loud online and they've deluded themselves into thinking a sprite, turn based jrpg would somehow outsell the current entries. They've even been using BG3's success as "proof" of this while completely ignoring that a turn based cprg is massively different from how jrpgs do turn based combat (and also the other factors that made BG3 blow up over other crpgs like full voice acting and cinematic presentation for story...which they also hate in games).

I get you. But my point stands. They are FF audience. Dismiss the nostalgic audience, where are those fabled new fans ?
SE has been trying for years to grow the fanbase, but I'm really unconvinced their efforts amounted to anything.

 

[kio]

This is all most of this industry is doing these days. I'll keep saying it until I go blue in the face, GaaS are the biggest threat to this industry's health.

We act like some other jrpg selling 1-2m is a tremendous success but those are peanut numbers in the grand scheme of things. It may be good enough for those companies now but they expect growth too, they'll expect the next one to do 2-3m and so on. But those other games aren't going to reach those heights most likely, there's a hard cap on what many of them will sell and it's 5m at most. Hell we act like games selling 10m is a huge achievement when there were games 20 years ago selling 10m copies the only difference now is today's games cost 10-100x more than they did back then.

As it occurred to you that maybe it didn't sell that well because people don't enjoy it? Or maybe because they didn't enjoy the previous one and hence aren't going to invest in the sequel? Or maybe they don't approve the direction the franchise has headed? Or maybe they already have too much on their plate since there's 10 interesting/good games releasing every week? Or a million other plausible reasons???
Why does it look like you think square is owed any sort of success or sales just by releasing a game?

 

[Li Kao]

SE woes is an interesting topic. We can discuss it for hours. But then I'm afraid all there is to it is that yuraya is right and FF is a dead brand.
Now, fucking terrifying but not without merits, maybe it's JRPG as a whole that are dying.