LiS tends to last a bit longer than a year, and I've been torn to play it bc I'd like to actually buy one of their entries. But I keep failing to finish other games before they leave, including an alternate playthrough of Guardians, so that's just more I gotta buy. Sigh.

The twitterites against the Xbox camp are whining about how HB2 looks "blurry" and Horizon FW has more character detail. I guess mist effects & chromatic aberration mean nothing; Senua has more life in her eyes and facial expression animation than even Aloy in HFW. And rocks look good in every major game for the last 12 years (ever since tessellation was popularized), with the exceptions being DAI and MEA bc BioWare didn't have full mastery of Frostbite.

@NEStalgia it's not up to Jim Ryan, ultimately. SCIE division answers to the ultimate parent Sony company and its primary shareholders, who'd be flipping the bill for a buyout.

@stvevan yes, bc the devs pay for marketing on those showcases, and they may or may not have taken exclusive marketing deals for Game Pass - because they'd wanna try actually pushing for more sales on the more ubiquitous platform

Why write "seemingly" in two consecutive paragraphs? Use a synonym, it's less annoying.

Who here is old enough to remember what "Hi-Fi" is?

@Gamingforlife reviews don't actually affect sales as much as we think

I like how people compare this to CoD, on Reddit, but those teams make marginal changes to their various engine branches, every few years. They also don't have quite the revolving door.

I don't hold positive or negative expectations based on "pedigree." Blank slate is best.

@somnambulance You're kind of going both ways there. If you like having something to look forward to, that's fine but it ultimately holds no weight as a factor since you also say you could wait (and you also imply that you've got other stuff to do in any case). Waiting is much easier without a hard schedule that gets missed (and more will be missed as delays become common); it's also easier if you have something to do, as you'd agree.

Transparency is a tangential topic that shouldn't really apply here. We're not investing in these company finances, and they're not providing essential services nor in charge of anything robust (like the USA's SEC for example, which banks on being transparent because that agency makes other organizations enforce transparency).

We don't actually need or are entitled to know what they're doing, at least not as often as we'd like to be informed. They merely bring up new projects to generate marketing hype (sometimes even "pre-hype"), and to guage whether they're going to be true to a franchise's spirit or are in need of a course correction. They also need to keep up appearances in staying competitive and appeasing shareholders, and since most of these companies are public, they can't break news to shareholders without the public at large becoming aware of said news anyway.

At some point we gotta realize that we've allowed ourselves to become entrapped by the various industrial practices here, defining our realities by the surrounding walls (so to speak). We're only owed a satisfactory product for the purchases we've made. Nothing more or less than that. Everything else is fluff.

@somnambulance I don't think it's necessarily better knowing something is far off with a hard or soft release date, but still with a possibility of delay, than it is to not have an update at all and/or no release date.

The latter scenario is definitely worse when you've invested finances into a project (e.g. crowdfunding or irresponsible preorder system) or said project is extremely disruptive (e.g. like transit construction; see what's going on in the cities of Ottawa and Toronto, of Ontario, Canada).

Worst case example of the former case: Cyberpunk 2077 (delayed repeatedly, each time with rather hard dates; would've been better with zero promises)

Good example of the former:

• a bunch; many games announced at something like E3 have vague release windows and potential consumers aren't actually clamouring for news as if they have nothing to do or as if they bought the game already (it's just certain Xbox, Sony and most Nintendo ones that that is guaranteed to happen)

Worst case scenario of the latter:

• Zelda: TotK (people had kept expecting more announcements for this after its initial reveal in 2019 or 2020, and we finally got one trailer in 2021 and a revised release, trailer and actual name in 2022)

Good example of the latter:

• Wytchfire and other games that get one announcement and disappear for a long time (sometimes years). Works especially for new IP and new studios, and indies

@Grumblevolcano and we need more of the latter format, not the others.

@Benjamin you've left Project Mara off that list (which is also from Ninja Theory and probably further behind than Hellblade)

@CrazyJF thought I was going crazy for a minute, lmao

@Green-Bandit Two years ago, in early 2021, many of us figured that they would start holding games in the reserve, largely to avoid the two-year cross-gen promise Spencer made in 2020, and also due to pandemic woes.

Regardless, I was okay wit what I got in 2022 and that counts for something.

@CrazyJF leaks until a few days ago, you mean

E3 better become a more focused trade show again. Since it opened to the public and had to expand its operations, things slowly went down hill logistically whilst Sony and others pulled out; then a major leak and a pandemic later we're here today, and tbh I bet most of us would be ok with an online-only showcase (no crowds present).

Also, North America is still wasting gas by sending people to one corner of the continent for a not-even one week expo?

@Somebody those 20 minute specialized Nintendo directs were usually Treehouse things. i can't remember what the full name for those shows are

@Widey85 what are you talking about? We just got some good GP releases.

Surprised that Nintendo hasn't wagged their fingers at MS for calling the presentation a "Direct"

@Fishticon people don't want answers. They want product.

Nope, blocking that Kaloudz feller.

Couldn't they have titled it something scarier, like Bloodfall or something? Lol

Also, maybe we should all agree to stagger our play times in the first week, so that we're not all scheduled to play literally right when it launches.

@Chuffer

The funny thing is that the deluxe perks for that game, or at least the extra lightsaber skins/colours and patterns for BD-1 and the ship, were already available for free when I played this game through Game Pass Ultimate two years ago.

Lol jarring political comments. Would prefer Eurogamer's than the gutter tripe proffered up by OAG or similar places to that one (which I can't be bothered to remember the names of).

Oh I see, we're still playing the "let's use a term liberally" game! My favourite

The solution for an in-between isn't this hypothetical Series C, but a Super Series X at premium price (>= Series X launch edition's price) in 2024. Then the to-be-outdated X would become the middle ground.

Kinda sucks that this was purportedly just DLC for Valhalla, and they repurposed it as a "throwback" to classic AC. Shows a relative lack of fuss, but the sucky part was that it was done for "exotic" ancient cultural settings when a project like this should be for run-of-the-mill stuff they're always doing.

@Sol76 the 1st NASA game was definitely a literal game

@Zombifiedkilla some of the preloads, well before the launches of those games, end up being just ~100MB license files afaik

"Blurry" is still very vague, since it describes multiple looks.

BOTW's sequel got delayed early this year, too, so the first half of 2023 seems VERY crowded and MS in particular has games that could very well compete with each other.

Everybody thought they were dodging a bullet when BOTW 2 got delayed, but it seems to be take a risk with a crowded 2023 or go up against God of War: Ragnarok for the holiday season, lol.

Well known who? Okay.

I dislike the snippets, blurbs or abstracts of reviews that get shared. They either go over my head on the first pass, don't tell me anything, or sound like the reviewer was trying too hard to find something to write about. I guess that would be okay, but then I gotta read the rest of the review to see if my confusion/etc was genuinely warranted or if the writer was just momentarily full of baloney (both are the wrong reasons to click on a link).

@Kezelpaso yeaaaah boi! What a time to be alive, and set in Hong Kong. Excellent choice

Test Drive Unlimited

I like the typical swords & sorcery + dragons/etc fantasy theme(s), but I'd rather the imagery and iconography move beyond medieval inspirations.

"Review bombing" is a loose term with several contexts. Specify. One context suggests coordination amongst a subset of users - that is likely not the case, for various reasons (laziness being one of them).

It is incorrect and deficient to down-rate something to lowest score because it's not aesthetically, thematically/politically catered to you; something that you've fundamentally disagreed with. Overall quality of a game experience has next to nothing to do with the message in its medium (and the medium is the message, in case you haven't heard); today's writers brush on this when they talk about the "cultural impact" of a game — I think that's fine to talk about, but not fine for anyone to base their opinion of something.

Thus, if the constituent design elements (e.g. gameplay in particular) sucks, take the effort to explain why. If it IS the writing, as described above, still be tactful, explicit, pertinent - what it means to be on point. You'll find that fundamental disagreement doesn't translate to "zero" or the closest substitute to that.

"Intolerable" is a sign of weakness.

@Xeno_Aura there is no industry standard.

GD the guy with the apostrophes

It wasn't that way about a year ago, though, especially for solid 60fps

Wow last ever Fifa EA game... Last one I played for real was 18 or 19, might give it one last go. Hopefully it goes out with a hurrah.

Madden, NBA 2K and the latest F1 continue to be my favourite sports games

It's a shame Naraka is a BR game. Good thing they added campaign co-op.

@NEStalgia Well said. Additionally, the vast majority of all those leaks - whether they're ***** or not, whistleblowing or not, from an actual inside source or a rumour-mongering attention grubber - are intentional. Very few accidental ones, if at all. Just thought I'd throw that additional consideration, as a tangent.

Re: Hiring, we should only assume that it's still "early development" iff (if and only if) we know what sort of positions they're hiring to fill. So it is not a factor of whether they're just hiring at all (just what they're hiring for).

Oh yes, because all [of] their 1st/2nd-party games (yes, first and second) sold tens of millions each over their lifespans, netting them ~50-70% or more of MSRP (which was never more than 60 USD; 80 CAD, until now, but as they lower prices for a game then even a 70 USD title becoming 50 bucks averages out to a cool 60 over time).

But of those tens of millions, a few titles netted more than 10-15M NEW sales (the rest were used sales).

The preceding paragraphs are intended to be a bit sarcastic and quite hyperbolic (exaggerated).

Instead of banking the profits from their revenue, they upped their future expenditures, which lead to what, exactly? What does an increased expenditure of millions more do, to attain qualitative results beyond that of HFW/HZD and God of War? Was it for R&D on the fancy SSD IO throughput bandwidth in the PS5? Was it for allowing them to hire more junior writers like Alanah Pearce, in fall 2020 (no less for a game that understandably got delayed seeing as how they were still hiring writers A MERE YEAR out from original planned release)?

What exactly are they doing with their gross budgets, when they also have a hands-off policy on development, too - so who's even telling them that they need to spend more money when they're already doing it right with whatever they already have? (Any C-suite exec would tell you: "Why on earth would I approve of higher budgets when we got it right before with less?").

Instead of answering these questions, Mr. Jim Ryan, which would naturally arise upon analyzing your philosophy, maybe you should ask two questions instead:

1. How much profit is Microsoft and Xbox Game Studios actually making from the various Game Pass revenue streams - GP Ult in particular?

2. Is it actually funding (expenditure) that's the problem with their games, or is it really too many cooks in the kitchens with no clear direction? To wit: Halo Infinite stumbled for years, Everwild stumbled last year or so, and Perfect Dark supposedly stumbling right now as we speak.

{Additionally, my further speculation is that their other projects and contracts are simply delays for various reasons which may not necessarily be remarkable or related to quality control. Examples: Project Mara is still too early in the pipeline, probably bc its older sibling Hellblade II is understandably taking forever; Starfield is too ambitious and probably on the wrong engine, as per usual with Bethesda (and that title is holding up TES 6); Redfall is yet another multiplayer title that very likely wasn't yet offering something revolutionary, so Arkane probably panicked and delayed it; Forza Motorsport 8 is likely sitting in the oven so that they can avoid the promise Uncle Phil made about maintaining "two year" cross-gen support for development. Everything else is just a delay for reasons beyond control (Stalker 2), or just announced too early.}

That's okay. Gotham Knights and Hogwarts are more than enough for me, and I refuse to get around to new games until 4+ months after they released anyway.

Was also getting tired of Keighley making his shows unofficially taking in too much of the limelight, so any excuse to watch less of his stuff is okay with me. (It's nothing personal: there should just be more unofficial "official" shows, and so far the only prominent people competing with him have relegated themselves to podcasts).

And I think that we also just need less stuff coming out, so that publishers aren't stretching themselves so thinly that they push out rushed crap and set schedule expectations unreasonably high for developers. That all usually has an economic backlash which directly affects the consumer, negatively. (I'm at a loss for succinct words here, oh well).

Uh, ok. Greedfall was decent but I've played in-depth modern and classic RPGs of similar or higher calibre over these last two decades or so. If they improve on their take of the recipe, great

My issue is that YouTubers and podcasters of all kind - including former professional studio workers & creators like him - are implicitly doing their "broadcasting" with so much focus because THEY have issues they probably still need to work through. I can't even begin to name all the commentators out there who rant because they have not successfully reconciled their hangups and baggage.