@InterceptorAlpha Only problem with black is you have to get an actual comfortable strap, and none of those come in black, and if you want a custom interface, you're stuck with white frames too, so it'll look kinda bad no matter how you do it.
I think the problem for Xbox VR (at least for actual VR) would be on the software side. They don't have a native Windows/Xbox VR kit, and the one they had (WMR) they not only discontinued but are ripping out of windows in an update. They talked about that direct line to Windows for Quest, but then Windows has no support and relies on 3rd party kits, with the total cancellation of their own so that makes no sense. The other is just the consumer support side, that built in wi-fi sucks, and supporting it where they have to point people to routers and such probably is far more cost than the benefit of VR support. Even on PC it's dodgy with various router brands not playing nice, etc (I made sure to get a Qualcomm based router since QC's seem to play nice with their own XR2 chip.)
If I ever get a high res Pimax set though I might start using that as my monitor as well!
@HarmanSmith Yep, that's the life of an Atlus fan lol.
I originally bought SMTV on Switch and a mix of the gameplay not gelling, and the 15-20fps slideshow performance, I just could NOT play it. Never even got to Tokyo tower. Picked it up every few months to give it another go, and it just didn't work.
I actually JUST rebought it recently for the Vengeance version but got derailed giving it a serious go by the Metaphor demo dropping. At proper fps it's a MUCH better game than it was on Switch already, but I still find "something" about the gameplay not clicking. I didn't realize what at first but I think the problem is having too few ways to regain MP. Persona games are kind of balanced so you have to be frugal and use your MP well. Metaphor has the ability to use Mage to grind some MP. SMTV has the little crystals you too rarely find, and the restore for macca at the founts, but at least in the early game, MP is too low, macca to scarce, and in a battle system that seems to have more trial and error MP use as you get going with weak demons, it feels like a frustrating slog. I'm sure it improves after a while, and that's the early game woes, but it's amazingly frustrating.
I also think the ambient soundscape soundtrack irritates me at least in that area which drags me out of the experience lol. I played a while last night then switched to P3R again lol.
@Utena-mobile If Micrsft could make $20 shaving the "o"'s off their name, Nadella would do it.
@InterceptorAlpha I still find it hilarious there's an "Xbox Quest 3" when all the Xbox part is is playing pancake games in big screen. I laugh every time I see the GP icon on my Quest, like, why would I play GP games on here when I could play VR games?
@Ralizah Yeah the third party apps like Whatsapp exist, but you'd think at this point that would just be the default rather than weird proprietary apps you can only call people who use the same brand of phone. Like, I know Apple is a cult, but do Apple people seriously only ever communicate with other Apple people? Do they all wear the same clothes and order the same coffee at the same coffee chain together?
@HonestHick I can get preferring note taking an productivity apps, and I also don't really video call outside my PC for productivity stuff, but I still think it's absurd that it's not a standard protocol, that video calling can only work to call someone of the same brand platform. Imagine if AT&T customers could only call other AT&T customers, and if you want to call a Verizon customer you need a separate Verizon phone. That's how the video calling works and it's so stupid.
And there's not much to prefer about one app or the other, it's a video player with a hang up button.
I never buy games at full price, and I already have a massive pile of unfinished Atlus games (P3R, P5S, SMTV, SH2) and yet I'm tempted to buy Metaphor right away. IDK why but I was instantly hooked completely, and find it much more satisfying than SMTV which still doesn't click for me like SMTIV did. Only fear is I spent 17 hours on the prolog DEMO...this thing might be more huge than P5R which too me 7 months to work through!
It's like the perfect blend of the best parts of SMT, Persona, classic FF (Jobs system), and even a hint of Etrian Odyssey. Like a love letter to Atlus fans who also love FF.
This was a given, they already announced WMR was ending which killed multiple major headsets. Shame, MS had a good footing on VR and is just scraping the future away to buy more cash in the present.
@HonestHick one thing that kills me is the exclusivity of "face time". It's not like Android doesn't have video calls. Instead of a standard video call protocol for all phones we have this hideous proprietary system where Apple people can only video call Apple people and Android people can only video call Android people and if you need both you need two phones and two contracts. How has a universal third party video call app not replaced both yet?
@GamingFan4Lyf All very true. That's the sad part. Xbox had the better product, the better service, and the better prices. And the market rejected it. I'm convinced that console gamers overall just aren't a group that thinks very much at all anymore. It's basically just Twitter. When you consider the majority of console gamers are just devotees of the big platform online games obsessed with paying to keep up with their friends, and are just followers that just do whatever everyone else does, it's not the most thoughtful group in terms of majority buyers. Compare to the start of last Gen when gamers revolted against matrick. Dunno if it's gamers or kids getting endlessly dumber despite seeming every academically more intelligent than anyone else ever. Maybe it's genius syndrome and all kids are geniuses. They can design rocket motors on a napkin but lock them in a room and they'll never figure out a way out.
@Ralizah I wish I could remap switch, because im mostly playing with PC/XB controllers 75% of the time, and PS shapes are fine so switch is the only one that's a total mental freeze for me. Though that would break the feel of, say, jump, so maybe that wouldn't work either.
X is modestly irritating between xb and ps but it's still xb to Nintendo that drives me absolutely nuts. Everything mirrored. I'll never adapt. And since the Xbox/Sega layout is now the standard PC layout for nearly all third party controllers and the PC handhelds, AND Nintendo even copied the Xbox controller but left their own SNES button mapping it drives me even more crazy. Ps being completely different with shapes doesn't give me too much trouble but I do still stumble on x sometimes.
@Ralizah Don't retcon, you were a pony before you were a nintendrone
@HarmanSmith Well, it's relevant for VR, though I wouldn't say it's relevant for PSVR at least this generation....4k isn't really relevant there, lol, but in the up and coming near to long range future in VR, it'll be relevant with some true 8k and above headsets coming up, and a 12k one on the horizon.
About 60ppd gives you 'retina display" or "true to life" imaging in VR, and 8k or so gives you about 50-53ppd depending on display and lens. So close though not technically quite there. But in terms of GPU it needs more than that, you need to generally render higher than the actual display resolution because in software it needs to do postprocessing to each frame for lens correction (barrel distortion, chromatic abberation, all the stuff photographers use Photoshop for to correct for a specific lens design.) So to get 8k out you need more like 9 or 10k rendering.
I'm a huge VR fan personally, but it's still in that early tech era for sure. High cost is a big barrier, but Meta is lowering that barrier similar to Series S for 2D, and even with that people aren't biting, similar to Series S for 2D. Some of it is the tech and cost to do "really really good VR" is probably 20 years away for the average person. Some of it is people just not liking the wearable nature of it, and some due to the nausea phenomenon some have, etc....it's hard to get it to take off. But, man, once you get used to it, 2D gaming feels like a different medium entirely, and kind of quaint. But some people just don't take to it.
The tentpoles that sent me back to PC after swearing it off in 2010 or so were: Xbox consoles getting dubious, the PS5 Pro rumors and my (spot on) expectation on the future trajectory of console pricing, and the one-foot-in nature of PSVR2 vs what you can do (for a price) with PCVR. Between that and the PC handhelds being the GameBoy I always wanted, I made the jump.
@Fenbops Also FWIW, 8k matters for VR. It matters a LOT actually. Right now current GPUs are holding back VR because they only have Displayport 1.4 and 4k is already saturating the bandwidth and can't push proper 8k, or soon, 12k, at all. In VR, 8k=4k per eye, at about an inch away from the eye, and it really takes about 9 or 10k for "retina" performance. Since PS does VR it's almost relevant, except that link protocol they're using doesn't support it, their headset can't use it, and there's not the slightest chance the hardware can render it.
@Fenbops People are unnecessarily harsh on FSR. Yes, people on the PC side complain about FSR because compared to DLSS it's bad. People on the console side say FSR is bad because, well, just look at it, but FSR has multiple modes, and both consoles seem to be using the performance mode most of the time which, yes, looks absolutely horrible, across the board and nobody should use it ever, the Ultra mode (on PCs) looks quite good. As good as DLSS? No. But a heck of a lot better than the console mode used. FSR isn't the best, but it gets an unfair rep because of how consoles abuse it, and because of just how good DLSS is.
I'm the first person to say everything said here and more in every article about the PS5 Pro. It's absolutely true, and people do need to be informed about it. More importantly prospective buyers need to be truly informed about what they're really getting vs what the marketing has a lot of buyers thinking they're getting. It isn't that. It's a $700 scaler with a mostly insignificant performance bump and a larger SSD. If a better scaler is worth $700 to people, fine, it's a terrible, horrifying value proposition but if that's what people want, fine, but they need to know thats what they're buying. 1TB and an AI scaler. The GPU bump is marginal and mostly just able to smooth out framerates a little better.
The problems with the pro are that the base console was released too soon before tech was where it needed to be to be a valid leap, and thus as new games came out these base consoles both look awful. Then the second problem is not ENOUGH time has gone by since then at the current evolution of tech to have a meaningful upgrade from it so it feels like a half-step for a whole price. Selling that as sort of a "do over" so the games "suck less than before" feels wrong on both counts. The ROOT problem is that both consoles are just PCs now, and developers don't truly make versions of the game meant to run at it's best on the hardware at hand, all games are made for some future hardware that doesn't exist yet and/or PCs.
Even so, it just seems like bad form for an Xbox site to have a whole article putting down a PS model. Even though it's true, even though the rumor of the PS5 pro and my expectations on price being spot on being among the things that pushed me to PC to begin with...just seems...wrong. It's a discussion to argue from within the PS community but seems a bit cheap to argue about it from without.
I think this is a conversation that WILL come back across all parties during the run up to next gen though, where we know both companies will now be looking at those $700+ price points as valid. People insist "no, Sony knows that's enthusiasts and they need an affordable console for the masses." Many of these are the same people that insisted "No PS5 Pro won't be $750 LOL, they know better, it'll be $550-600 and the base console will be $450-500!" Phil already lubed us up for "consoles will be, maybe, more expensive than people are used to paying." We know what's coming from both of them.
@Fenbops Yeah, the Ubisoft scenario is as far as I know, unprecedented. IDK what happened, they used to be amazing. Sometime after ACII took off and they realigned the whole company around cranking AC games out annually to rival CoD, something in the company just broke in a way that never went back together again.
I know a big part of their problems was the Vivendi hostile takeover attempt and their attempts to try to avoid that, and I applaud them for succeeding, and I think things are way better because of it, but I also think in that effort they made a lot of horrible decisions that maybe really were necessary in that moment to do what they needed and keep from being taken over, but in the long term still caused catastrophic damage.
@Fenbops With a lot of companies especially in the gaming sector, you'd be right, but in this case I'm not so sure Ubisoft chose Yasuke for "DEI"/culture war/pandering/projecting reasons. I think that was their attempt to "differentiate" themselves from Ghost, because Ghost was basically the AC:Japan everyone wanted since it was teased at the end of AC1 and for some reason they slept on it until after Sucker Punch beat them to it. So it made this "different", and also I think intentionally sparked outrage and conversation which helped promote the game above the noise, because, without the controversy, it would have seemed like a less interesting Ghost. I think they knew what they were doing. I don't think they were promoting culture wars, I think they were using culture wars as a tool to float their game's mindshare up when it already has a competitor they knew was much more unique.
And for whatever reason, Ubi uses American rap music in ALL their trailers, so I think that's neither here nor there. It's the usual Ubisoft Yves take on what the kids today seem to like.
The internet trying to make it this weird "people hate it because racists don't to play a black assassin" thing is what's really weird though. It ignores that Origins happened and Bayek is one of the fan-favorite characters (I think most would have preferred Origins 2 with more Bayek to this...or Odyssey......or Valhalla....) Also ignores that there's no controversy over Aveligne, even though, that's mostly because few played that game because it was a console port of a Vita game that failed on a dead console. But also because her story fit her time appropriately. Maybe, just maybe the problem here is...people wanted to play AC Japan...with believable characters for Japan. (Yes, I know Yasuke is real, and also was not a famous front lines warrior changing history. They just found something that would cause controversy and ran with it.)
I also agree, the "exclusivity" pushes have mostly pushed things into shining a spotlight on every checkboxed "included" figure just to highlight they've been included so the hecklers don't go nuts. Instead of actually including things as natural it feels like the old circus tents showcasing the 2 headed baby and bearded woman. LOOK EVERYONE, WE'VE GOT A REAL LIVE [insert inclusion demographic individual here] TAKE A LOOK, COME ONE, COME ALL!"
@cardcrusher29 Why have Jackie Chan when you an have Van Damme, amirite?
Yeah, as others have said, for those that don't know, the runaway sales success is almost entirely in China alone, and there, nearly entirely on PC. The game is sort of a cultural touch point in China, based on one of their most famous classical literary works that's deeply tied into the culture, plus a big AAA Nvidia sponsored game from a Chinese studio and it turned into a viral success instantly.
Doesn't mean it's a bad game, but it's extreme success looks different in context than at a glance. It's not really because the game became the biggest thing ever, it's explicitly a China thing and is a game that sells averagely decent elsewhere as well.
@CaptainCluck IDK if it's even a "DEI" thing, but it feels insanely awkward. We play AC to live in this historical settings for a bit, and if we're playing in Japan it stands to reason we want to step into the shoes of a Japanese figure. If we wanted to step into the shoes of an African figure......we could replay Origins. Which is probably a much better game anyway.... We already had AC:Africa. We wanted AC:Japan since AC:Holy Land ended. And they give us AC:Japrica. Still better than AC:London though
It still looks like a fun time once it hits sales, but they definitely short changed what it could have been with some bizarre choices just to differentiate from GoT, IMO.
@Bigmanfan or even an unpopular one, opting only for their own which absolutely nobody voluntarily uses. And still loses steam sales when on steam because of it. Their games don't even show up in the steam mobile app library because they're the only publisher I know of that opts out of family sharing explicitly and the mobile app doesn't show the ones omitted...
At this point they should just throw the games on gog and hope for the best because they literally can't sell any worse....
@HonestHick IMO I think the success of Halo was a fluke. Fps was the big thing at the time and everything was a doom clone. They really rode the trend but happened to have a unique spin on mechanics and one great lore writer and one great composer they've since ousted and the sued, and it all clicked. But that was it. They copy pasted a few times with extended story and it worked but they really haven't had an original idea since CE, and even that was a fresh spin on what was already there. Myth was their only really unique game.
@themightyant marketing. The new box is an opportunity to reboot the marketing and boost the brand while having temporary advantages to market.
I'm not saying I believe they'll successfully do that, because Xbox. But that's why these companies do it. And realistically there's no way they can reboot the Series, it's already over. They need a new platform to reboot. Especially if it's a shakeup and disruptor somehow (PC integration, handheld hybrid, SOMETHING to disrupt the status quo.) It's all diminishing returns. It's never going to be anything but diminishing returns ever again unless VR hits it big. It's about marketing, and only about marketing forever more.
I still disagree, strongly about "the games" narrative though. I think that's outdated for a different consumer than the current console consumer. Nintendo excluded, because what they have aren't "great games" what they have is "household child-driven, nostalgia-focused legendary brands and characters on a bigger-than-Disney-itself scale." Nobody else will ever be able to leverage IP exclusivity the way Nintendo can, because nobody but Disney itself has IPs of that nature. Even if they sell lousy games (like half the Pokemon games of the last decade) they'll still outsell everything else by double. Let's be real, modern Pokemon is an Xbox grade series.
I don't think the modern consumer is buying it for "exclusive games from the first party". I don't think the modern console consumer could give two flips about "first party exclusives", and I think both Sony and Microsoft are very, very, very aware of that at this point. They know their install base numbers. They know what people are playing. They know their first party numbers are a fraction of their install base. I don't think a dozen TLOUs are gong to move Xbox. It's all about marketing and getting into people's heads why they should play GTA and the like on an Xbox instead of a PS. And that's where they've failed. They haven't really given reasons why people should play it on an Xbox, and everybody already knows everybody they know plays on a PS. "Because Game Pass" and "Because Halo 6" isn't enough of a reason if you just want to play GTA. Which is MOST console buyers. I think people in the lifelong enthusiast circle are a bit behind the current market in the obsession with 1st party exclusives. We're still reliving N64 vs PSX vs Saturn forever and ever.
@HonestHick If the talent came from apple, I'm pretty sure it's all the people responsible for the S-Mac before they had to beg Steve Jobs to come back from exile they sent him on
Something SERIOUSLY happened at Bungie. They were a nobody, and made Mac games of all things, that's like launching WiiU exclusives. Then they did Halo and it went straight to their heads and never did anything well again. And everything that descends from them seems equally cursed.
@Real_game_passion Valve doesn't have the reach to put Steamdeck on shelves in every Walmart. Xbox does. That's the key difference. For enthusiasts, Deck, Ally, Legion make sense. For the masses that go to Walmart and see the new handheld console on the endcap and get interested, Deck and Ally never existed to begin with.
@Fenbops Yeah others said it but "biggest tech leap" doesn't mean "biggest jump in raster performance", it's codeword for things like AI or other innovation systems, not raw power.
Pricing, yeah, Phil had said in that interview about the end of Moore's Law and how the console subsidy model is over, and people might have to pay "maybe more than they're used to" for consoles. I'm fully expecting both PS6 and neXtBox to be in the $700-1200 range. And I think that's a falling of point where people stop caring. Consoles were meant to be "cheap" ways to play video games. Once they become major investments and there's plenty of alternatives most people won't bother. Once you get to where consoles are competing in price with PCs, anyone tech inclined will head straight to PC, where the only real negatives were price and convenience, and once they're in similar pricing, the convenience isn't worth paying almost the same to get much less for all but the tech disinclined.
It may be that the future of gaming is 100% handheld hybrids with docks for affordable prices, PCs for enthusiast gaming and a weird niche of "really expensive home consoles" for people with lots of money and little skill and patience.
@sixrings Even the $1600 4090 can't handle 4k60 with full path trace in CP2077 without huge drops. Even FFXVI without RT cripples it to 30fps. Not all the money in the world can fix poor optimization and even decently optimized RT. If you're waiting for that in consoles, set your sights on 2034 or beyond. And also $1200-1500 consoles.
@themightyant Point 1 doesn't matter, they all just want to sell hardware, not really to sell hardware but to "reinvigorate interest in the brand." But point 2 is a major problem. I think that's a bigger issue for Sony. For MS, Series is stalled beyond recovery, it's lost interest and momentum. If they want Xbox hardware at all they need to "reinvigorate interest in the brand" with "exciting new hardware", and sooner is better. Long term, that's a problem, but Xbox kind of doesn't have a choice. Which is their long term problem, their hand is always forced by past mistakes, which just leads to new mistakes.
OTOH launching first helped with the X360, and if they're trying to cause a disruptive paradigm shift, going first, if it goes beyond specs (adding PC stores etc) could have a perception impact on PS6, IF it's successful. What MS needs most right now is just market growth. Even if PS leapfrogs them after, that initial period of selling as much as they can on hype with no Sony competitor, if they market it right (spoiler: they won't), could get them a foothold in markets they have none in now.
It could also force Sony to overreact and rush PS6, compromising it. Their current management absolutely would do that, too.
I think the problem for MS is it's clear they aren't interested in the "old" traditional console business and are looking to disrupt it (what's weird is that's what they were trying to do in 2001, then somehow morphed into an old traditional console), and the sooner they move onto whatever paradigm they're aiming for (if they can figure out what it is), the sooner they get out of this weird stall and talking out both sides of their mouth.
Will it succeed? It's Xbox, of course it won't But that's not the point....
Also "You'd also lose some of the major advantages consoles have over PC like being able to optimise for fixed hardware, and to subsidise hardware costs. Lastly many think Series S holds back Series X, if you had an even wider set of hardware wouldn't this be amplified?"
Who optimizes for Xbox? Even Xbox doesn't optimize for Xbox. At least the PC optimized version would work as it should on an equivalent PC.
And Phil already said hardware subsidy is over and hardware costs will go up. And then we saw PS5 Pro. Phil called it, and expect the same for XB.
I think the handheld WILL "hold back" Xbox the same way S does. And the rumor that Sony might do a handheld could for PS6 too. I think one thing we know for sure is the industry hit a dead end chasing power above all. Devs are going bankrupt trying to make games to use it, nobody's making healthy profit in the attempt except the established handful and most of them are still selling a PS360 game with bumped gfx. Chasing the graphics dragon may work for Nvidia but it's not working for anyone else. Hardware, even on PC, needs a great reset to be rolled back in what games need. Next gen might be the right time with the introduction of "me too" Switch platforms.
@Tyrant_T103 @themightyant @OldGamer999 The one thing that strikes me about all the things we poke fun at, is that half the biggest fails of the past 5 years in gaming all have one common thread: They're all rooted in Bungie.
There's Bungie itself going downward, there's 343 which fell out of Bungie and made beyond a mess and money hole of Infinite, there's Concord, enough said. Everything that has ever touched Bungie is pure poison. Whatever happened in that organization is so bad it tainted everything connected with it permanently.
There's been other fails, of course, Skull and Bones and SS:KTJL come to mind, but even those don't seem to have failed as hard as the Bungie connected stuff.
@Lup They hire an entire building full of lawyers to spend every day for decades pouring over every possible related patient and finding new ones to make for themselves so secure every area that the can own for themselves. Like Nintendo.
For everyone else, you don't, and pay your hundreds of millions when corporate comes knocking, or just let them absorb your company as collateral..
Nope never bothered with cod.. Bought the two that came out on wiiu. Campaign was kind of fun on the first one. Didn't bother finishing the second one (Call of Doggy). Tried the free one on ps and the auto aim shooting gallery is not for me. Still don't get why it's the biggest thing since sliced bread. Plenty of more interesting stuff to play. Better than fortnite I guess?
@Fiendish-Beaver Play all the games. Play all the games. Do it. Just do it. (Isn't Majima a cameo in LaD though?)
He's kind of the antagonist/protagonist/mostly bats**t nuts in a lovable way part of the main side cast in Kiryu's Y0-6 saga. A sort of frienemy turned friend? He's also the other main playable protag for half of Yakuza 0, so he's been playable before.
But a whole game with his crazy self as a pirate? Yes. This will be awesome.
Dunno about the English dub though. His Japanese VA Ugaki has such a style of his own that the character seems mostly built around that it's hard for me to imagine him without that voice. Kind of the same for Kiryu and Kuroda though. I don't understand half of what he says, but his smooth baritone is Kiryu.
OMG, at first I was disappointed about Hawaii again, I play LaD/Yakuza to enjoy Japan, not the US, but Majima gets is own whole game, lol? Sign me up! Instantly better than Y6.
"“I’m not being paid to do what he says,” it read. “I’m being paid to do what he meant.""
LOL if this doesn't sum up the entirety of the Xbox Series experience, I don't know what does.
@Balaam_ I mean we did just read how Hulst blew $400M on the "future" of the company that flamed out in 12 days. I think the takeaways is what we already know. Nobody knows wtf they're doing in the games industry C suites.
@smoreon Ah, my error, I said "SMT1", but it was really Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (or DDS:MT2). SMT1 was basically a remake and reboot of DDSMT2 (same story etc.) So yeah, it was still "MegaTen", just the precursor to the "Shin" part of the series. Either way Pokemon's an Atlus ripoff. Cuter though. Much, much cuter.
This guy has a more level head than most of the industry. Instead in shoveling god money into one game that must become the next big thing, having variety of diverse content to get more chances of success. I remember when the industry worked that way and grew until the snack food executives took over and made it shrink.
@16BitHero nice, I have my quest 3 and a 6ghz router ready 4090 soon, didn't wait for 5090 because I feel between scalpers and delays it'll be next summer till its available anyway and affording it is questionable. I'm actually considering a Pimax Crystal Super, but I'm not sure finances will allow when it launches in a frew months.
I love the small file size as this will be a permanently installed PCVR game for me. But I do wonder how seamless the streaming is, especially for VR where you do NOT want any kind of stutters.
@Banjo- @Cherip-the-Ripper It goes deeper than that. Game Freak was originally a gaming magazine, not a developer, founded by the same 3 guys that have been running it through today (all pre-Nintendo, who technically still does NOT own them, they simply have an investment stake in them which is why they were able to make Tembo and the horse racing game for PC/XB/PS. Nintendo just bought the Pokemon brand and invested into GF.)
Anyway, Tajirii was reviewing SMT1 for the magazine, which is actually the original monster collecting game, though I suspect there could have been something earlier that borrowed from, that was the first complete package. While he was reviewing it and coming up with criticisms he decided he could make a better RPG than SMT. He put together his childhood hobby of bug collecting, and the, then new, idea of the Game Boy Link cable allowing people to connect their games, and the ideas of SMT's demon collecting, and built it out into what became Pokemon, and the rest is history.
So, yes, Pokemon is literally based on/"inspired by" Shin Megami Tensei directly, back when GF was a indie outfit/magazine.
Of course Nintendo, in this case, is suing for patents from code/database implementation (??) not game similarity. But unless they have reason to believe a former employee jumped ship with proprietary information (maybe they did? We don't know, that would be genuine theft), or maybe thy reverse engineered (illegally) the game to find (not directly stolen but "similar things" to send to the patent team).
But what irks me is they've had it in for this game for a while, they were rumored to be pressuring retailers and media to ignore the game, and clearly spent their time digging for dirt to find anything to hang it with and found something, somehow, eventually.
OTOH, Palworld going out of it's way to copy the aesthetic of the #1 franchise in the world was playing with fire, and it's hard to be too sympathetic to them either. If you make a game copying GTA'a asethetic, or pokemon, or WoW, or whatever, you know you're going to have a bad time, it's like having a fireworks display in a DMZ.
@anoyonmus Yeah I took a look at all that. That still seems amazingly tenuous. Those parents may be legal but they're parents on obvious systems that anyone doing similar things would end up doing largely. Shameless. Legal but shameless. Palworld was shameless in copying the Pokemon aesthetic. Nintendo is shameless in pressuring media and stores to ignore the game and now searching to find something to attack for. Unless someone at palworld is former game freak or obviously reverse engineered and duplicated Pokemon systems and can be fingered, then I really question if Nintendo violated copyright and tos to reverse engineer palworld to find this supposed violation. Is like a pair of bandits saying "wasnt me, he did it"
@VisitingComet1 seriously with the way the industry is behaving these days if I wasnt already switching to PC I think I'd just switch to phone games. I can't stand supporting these whack jobs anymore.
@anoyonmus That's interesting information. Though it also seems very dubious. Patenting coding techniques? And how would they even know that was violated without reverse engineering palworld which is itself a copyright violation. I think the biggest crime here is that the uspo actually granted these patents to begin with.
Still going after palworld for internal things that probably should never have been patentable seems like such an obvious witch hunt to find "something" to pin on a product they didn't like existing. after Nintendo was allegedly pressuring organizations in Japan to disassociate with pal world.
Comments 6,865
Re: Microsoft To Stop Selling HoloLens Headsets, Public Security Updates To End In 2027
@InterceptorAlpha Only problem with black is you have to get an actual comfortable strap, and none of those come in black, and if you want a custom interface, you're stuck with white frames too, so it'll look kinda bad no matter how you do it.
I think the problem for Xbox VR (at least for actual VR) would be on the software side. They don't have a native Windows/Xbox VR kit, and the one they had (WMR) they not only discontinued but are ripping out of windows in an update. They talked about that direct line to Windows for Quest, but then Windows has no support and relies on 3rd party kits, with the total cancellation of their own so that makes no sense. The other is just the consumer support side, that built in wi-fi sucks, and supporting it where they have to point people to routers and such probably is far more cost than the benefit of VR support. Even on PC it's dodgy with various router brands not playing nice, etc (I made sure to get a Qualcomm based router since QC's seem to play nice with their own XR2 chip.)
If I ever get a high res Pimax set though I might start using that as my monitor as well!
Re: Metaphor: ReFantazio's First Review Is Getting Everyone Hyped For The Full Release
@HarmanSmith Yep, that's the life of an Atlus fan lol.
I originally bought SMTV on Switch and a mix of the gameplay not gelling, and the 15-20fps slideshow performance, I just could NOT play it. Never even got to Tokyo tower. Picked it up every few months to give it another go, and it just didn't work.
I actually JUST rebought it recently for the Vengeance version but got derailed giving it a serious go by the Metaphor demo dropping. At proper fps it's a MUCH better game than it was on Switch already, but I still find "something" about the gameplay not clicking. I didn't realize what at first but I think the problem is having too few ways to regain MP. Persona games are kind of balanced so you have to be frugal and use your MP well. Metaphor has the ability to use Mage to grind some MP. SMTV has the little crystals you too rarely find, and the restore for macca at the founts, but at least in the early game, MP is too low, macca to scarce, and in a battle system that seems to have more trial and error MP use as you get going with weak demons, it feels like a frustrating slog. I'm sure it improves after a while, and that's the early game woes, but it's amazingly frustrating.
I also think the ambient soundscape soundtrack irritates me at least in that area which drags me out of the experience lol. I played a while last night then switched to P3R again lol.
Re: Microsoft To Stop Selling HoloLens Headsets, Public Security Updates To End In 2027
@Utena-mobile If Micrsft could make $20 shaving the "o"'s off their name, Nadella would do it.
@InterceptorAlpha I still find it hilarious there's an "Xbox Quest 3" when all the Xbox part is is playing pancake games in big screen. I laugh every time I see the GP icon on my Quest, like, why would I play GP games on here when I could play VR games?
Re: Xbox Wants More Feedback From Devs, Including Why Some Are Avoiding The Platform
@Ralizah Yeah the third party apps like Whatsapp exist, but you'd think at this point that would just be the default rather than weird proprietary apps you can only call people who use the same brand of phone. Like, I know Apple is a cult, but do Apple people seriously only ever communicate with other Apple people? Do they all wear the same clothes and order the same coffee at the same coffee chain together?
Re: Xbox Wants More Feedback From Devs, Including Why Some Are Avoiding The Platform
@HonestHick I can get preferring note taking an productivity apps, and I also don't really video call outside my PC for productivity stuff, but I still think it's absurd that it's not a standard protocol, that video calling can only work to call someone of the same brand platform. Imagine if AT&T customers could only call other AT&T customers, and if you want to call a Verizon customer you need a separate Verizon phone. That's how the video calling works and it's so stupid.
And there's not much to prefer about one app or the other, it's a video player with a hang up button.
Re: Metaphor: ReFantazio's First Review Is Getting Everyone Hyped For The Full Release
I never buy games at full price, and I already have a massive pile of unfinished Atlus games (P3R, P5S, SMTV, SH2) and yet I'm tempted to buy Metaphor right away. IDK why but I was instantly hooked completely, and find it much more satisfying than SMTV which still doesn't click for me like SMTIV did. Only fear is I spent 17 hours on the prolog DEMO...this thing might be more huge than P5R which too me 7 months to work through!
It's like the perfect blend of the best parts of SMT, Persona, classic FF (Jobs system), and even a hint of Etrian Odyssey. Like a love letter to Atlus fans who also love FF.
Re: Review: Starfield Shattered Space (Xbox) - Bethesda Fumbles A Big Chance To Reignite Starfield's Thrusters
Oof. What has happened to Bethesda? They used to make amazing worlds. Now they make this.
Re: Microsoft To Stop Selling HoloLens Headsets, Public Security Updates To End In 2027
This was a given, they already announced WMR was ending which killed multiple major headsets. Shame, MS had a good footing on VR and is just scraping the future away to buy more cash in the present.
Re: Xbox Wants More Feedback From Devs, Including Why Some Are Avoiding The Platform
@HonestHick one thing that kills me is the exclusivity of "face time". It's not like Android doesn't have video calls. Instead of a standard video call protocol for all phones we have this hideous proprietary system where Apple people can only video call Apple people and Android people can only video call Android people and if you need both you need two phones and two contracts. How has a universal third party video call app not replaced both yet?
Re: Xbox Wants More Feedback From Devs, Including Why Some Are Avoiding The Platform
@GamingFan4Lyf All very true. That's the sad part. Xbox had the better product, the better service, and the better prices. And the market rejected it. I'm convinced that console gamers overall just aren't a group that thinks very much at all anymore. It's basically just Twitter. When you consider the majority of console gamers are just devotees of the big platform online games obsessed with paying to keep up with their friends, and are just followers that just do whatever everyone else does, it's not the most thoughtful group in terms of majority buyers. Compare to the start of last Gen when gamers revolted against matrick. Dunno if it's gamers or kids getting endlessly dumber despite seeming every academically more intelligent than anyone else ever. Maybe it's genius syndrome and all kids are geniuses. They can design rocket motors on a napkin but lock them in a room and they'll never figure out a way out.
Re: Random: Xbox Extends Phil Spencer's PS5 Controller Joke
@Ralizah I wish I could remap switch, because im mostly playing with PC/XB controllers 75% of the time, and PS shapes are fine so switch is the only one that's a total mental freeze for me. Though that would break the feel of, say, jump, so maybe that wouldn't work either.
Re: Random: Xbox Extends Phil Spencer's PS5 Controller Joke
X is modestly irritating between xb and ps but it's still xb to Nintendo that drives me absolutely nuts. Everything mirrored. I'll never adapt. And since the Xbox/Sega layout is now the standard PC layout for nearly all third party controllers and the PC handhelds, AND Nintendo even copied the Xbox controller but left their own SNES button mapping it drives me even more crazy. Ps being completely different with shapes doesn't give me too much trouble but I do still stumble on x sometimes.
@Ralizah Don't retcon, you were a pony before you were a nintendrone
Re: Opinion: As The Dust Settles On PS5 Pro, I'm Still Glad Xbox Didn't Bother
@HarmanSmith Well, it's relevant for VR, though I wouldn't say it's relevant for PSVR at least this generation....4k isn't really relevant there, lol, but in the up and coming near to long range future in VR, it'll be relevant with some true 8k and above headsets coming up, and a 12k one on the horizon.
About 60ppd gives you 'retina display" or "true to life" imaging in VR, and 8k or so gives you about 50-53ppd depending on display and lens. So close though not technically quite there. But in terms of GPU it needs more than that, you need to generally render higher than the actual display resolution because in software it needs to do postprocessing to each frame for lens correction (barrel distortion, chromatic abberation, all the stuff photographers use Photoshop for to correct for a specific lens design.) So to get 8k out you need more like 9 or 10k rendering.
I'm a huge VR fan personally, but it's still in that early tech era for sure. High cost is a big barrier, but Meta is lowering that barrier similar to Series S for 2D, and even with that people aren't biting, similar to Series S for 2D. Some of it is the tech and cost to do "really really good VR" is probably 20 years away for the average person. Some of it is people just not liking the wearable nature of it, and some due to the nausea phenomenon some have, etc....it's hard to get it to take off. But, man, once you get used to it, 2D gaming feels like a different medium entirely, and kind of quaint. But some people just don't take to it.
The tentpoles that sent me back to PC after swearing it off in 2010 or so were: Xbox consoles getting dubious, the PS5 Pro rumors and my (spot on) expectation on the future trajectory of console pricing, and the one-foot-in nature of PSVR2 vs what you can do (for a price) with PCVR. Between that and the PC handhelds being the GameBoy I always wanted, I made the jump.
Re: Opinion: As The Dust Settles On PS5 Pro, I'm Still Glad Xbox Didn't Bother
@Fenbops Also FWIW, 8k matters for VR. It matters a LOT actually. Right now current GPUs are holding back VR because they only have Displayport 1.4 and 4k is already saturating the bandwidth and can't push proper 8k, or soon, 12k, at all. In VR, 8k=4k per eye, at about an inch away from the eye, and it really takes about 9 or 10k for "retina" performance. Since PS does VR it's almost relevant, except that link protocol they're using doesn't support it, their headset can't use it, and there's not the slightest chance the hardware can render it.
Re: Opinion: As The Dust Settles On PS5 Pro, I'm Still Glad Xbox Didn't Bother
@Fenbops People are unnecessarily harsh on FSR. Yes, people on the PC side complain about FSR because compared to DLSS it's bad. People on the console side say FSR is bad because, well, just look at it, but FSR has multiple modes, and both consoles seem to be using the performance mode most of the time which, yes, looks absolutely horrible, across the board and nobody should use it ever, the Ultra mode (on PCs) looks quite good. As good as DLSS? No. But a heck of a lot better than the console mode used. FSR isn't the best, but it gets an unfair rep because of how consoles abuse it, and because of just how good DLSS is.
Re: Opinion: As The Dust Settles On PS5 Pro, I'm Still Glad Xbox Didn't Bother
I'm the first person to say everything said here and more in every article about the PS5 Pro. It's absolutely true, and people do need to be informed about it. More importantly prospective buyers need to be truly informed about what they're really getting vs what the marketing has a lot of buyers thinking they're getting. It isn't that. It's a $700 scaler with a mostly insignificant performance bump and a larger SSD. If a better scaler is worth $700 to people, fine, it's a terrible, horrifying value proposition but if that's what people want, fine, but they need to know thats what they're buying. 1TB and an AI scaler. The GPU bump is marginal and mostly just able to smooth out framerates a little better.
The problems with the pro are that the base console was released too soon before tech was where it needed to be to be a valid leap, and thus as new games came out these base consoles both look awful. Then the second problem is not ENOUGH time has gone by since then at the current evolution of tech to have a meaningful upgrade from it so it feels like a half-step for a whole price. Selling that as sort of a "do over" so the games "suck less than before" feels wrong on both counts. The ROOT problem is that both consoles are just PCs now, and developers don't truly make versions of the game meant to run at it's best on the hardware at hand, all games are made for some future hardware that doesn't exist yet and/or PCs.
Even so, it just seems like bad form for an Xbox site to have a whole article putting down a PS model. Even though it's true, even though the rumor of the PS5 pro and my expectations on price being spot on being among the things that pushed me to PC to begin with...just seems...wrong. It's a discussion to argue from within the PS community but seems a bit cheap to argue about it from without.
I think this is a conversation that WILL come back across all parties during the run up to next gen though, where we know both companies will now be looking at those $700+ price points as valid. People insist "no, Sony knows that's enthusiasts and they need an affordable console for the masses." Many of these are the same people that insisted "No PS5 Pro won't be $750 LOL, they know better, it'll be $550-600 and the base console will be $450-500!" Phil already lubed us up for "consoles will be, maybe, more expensive than people are used to paying." We know what's coming from both of them.
Re: Black Myth: Wukong Sells 20 Million Copies Before It Even Comes To Xbox
@MsJubilee @Kieduss Xbox version is confirmed just delayed.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@Fenbops Yeah, the Ubisoft scenario is as far as I know, unprecedented. IDK what happened, they used to be amazing. Sometime after ACII took off and they realigned the whole company around cranking AC games out annually to rival CoD, something in the company just broke in a way that never went back together again.
I know a big part of their problems was the Vivendi hostile takeover attempt and their attempts to try to avoid that, and I applaud them for succeeding, and I think things are way better because of it, but I also think in that effort they made a lot of horrible decisions that maybe really were necessary in that moment to do what they needed and keep from being taken over, but in the long term still caused catastrophic damage.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@Fenbops With a lot of companies especially in the gaming sector, you'd be right, but in this case I'm not so sure Ubisoft chose Yasuke for "DEI"/culture war/pandering/projecting reasons. I think that was their attempt to "differentiate" themselves from Ghost, because Ghost was basically the AC:Japan everyone wanted since it was teased at the end of AC1 and for some reason they slept on it until after Sucker Punch beat them to it. So it made this "different", and also I think intentionally sparked outrage and conversation which helped promote the game above the noise, because, without the controversy, it would have seemed like a less interesting Ghost. I think they knew what they were doing. I don't think they were promoting culture wars, I think they were using culture wars as a tool to float their game's mindshare up when it already has a competitor they knew was much more unique.
And for whatever reason, Ubi uses American rap music in ALL their trailers, so I think that's neither here nor there. It's the usual Ubisoft Yves take on what the kids today seem to like.
The internet trying to make it this weird "people hate it because racists don't to play a black assassin" thing is what's really weird though. It ignores that Origins happened and Bayek is one of the fan-favorite characters (I think most would have preferred Origins 2 with more Bayek to this...or Odyssey......or Valhalla....) Also ignores that there's no controversy over Aveligne, even though, that's mostly because few played that game because it was a console port of a Vita game that failed on a dead console. But also because her story fit her time appropriately. Maybe, just maybe the problem here is...people wanted to play AC Japan...with believable characters for Japan. (Yes, I know Yasuke is real, and also was not a famous front lines warrior changing history. They just found something that would cause controversy and ran with it.)
I also agree, the "exclusivity" pushes have mostly pushed things into shining a spotlight on every checkboxed "included" figure just to highlight they've been included so the hecklers don't go nuts. Instead of actually including things as natural it feels like the old circus tents showcasing the 2 headed baby and bearded woman. LOOK EVERYONE, WE'VE GOT A REAL LIVE [insert inclusion demographic individual here] TAKE A LOOK, COME ONE, COME ALL!"
@cardcrusher29 Why have Jackie Chan when you an have Van Damme, amirite?
Re: StarCraft Remastered & StarCraft 2 Coming To PC Game Pass This November
Ooohhhhhhhh mann.....I think I need to get a keybo/mouse setup now And here I was being happy to be controller only and then they do this....
Re: Phil Spencer Says 2024 Is Xbox's Best Year In Asia 'Across All Devices'
Incidentally Concord just had it's highest concurrent player count ever this month!
I love statistics.....
Re: Black Myth: Wukong Sells 20 Million Copies Before It Even Comes To Xbox
Yeah, as others have said, for those that don't know, the runaway sales success is almost entirely in China alone, and there, nearly entirely on PC. The game is sort of a cultural touch point in China, based on one of their most famous classical literary works that's deeply tied into the culture, plus a big AAA Nvidia sponsored game from a Chinese studio and it turned into a viral success instantly.
Doesn't mean it's a bad game, but it's extreme success looks different in context than at a glance. It's not really because the game became the biggest thing ever, it's explicitly a China thing and is a game that sells averagely decent elsewhere as well.
Re: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Apparently Spotted On Xbox
@GamingFan4Lyf Lol. Is it very exclusive feeling to be playing a game with 6000% more players than Concord?
Re: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster Apparently Spotted On Xbox
Dadadada-da-da-da-dada!
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@CaptainCluck IDK if it's even a "DEI" thing, but it feels insanely awkward. We play AC to live in this historical settings for a bit, and if we're playing in Japan it stands to reason we want to step into the shoes of a Japanese figure. If we wanted to step into the shoes of an African figure......we could replay Origins. Which is probably a much better game anyway.... We already had AC:Africa. We wanted AC:Japan since AC:Holy Land ended. And they give us AC:Japrica. Still better than AC:London though
It still looks like a fun time once it hits sales, but they definitely short changed what it could have been with some bizarre choices just to differentiate from GoT, IMO.
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@AverageGamer They haven't been consistent with that, either, sometimes only launching on Ubisoft Connect.
Re: PSA: Microsoft Is Discontinuing The Xbox Game Pass Mobile App In November
I will never understand why it was ever a separate app to begin with....
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@Bigmanfan or even an unpopular one, opting only for their own which absolutely nobody voluntarily uses. And still loses steam sales when on steam because of it. Their games don't even show up in the steam mobile app library because they're the only publisher I know of that opts out of family sharing explicitly and the mobile app doesn't show the ones omitted...
At this point they should just throw the games on gog and hope for the best because they literally can't sell any worse....
Re: Assassin's Creed Shadows Delayed To Feb 2025, Partly Due To Poor Start For Star Wars Outlaws
@Bigmanfan Whoa, launching right to Steam?! That's new. What's next, not tying it to the Ubi launcher?
STILL waiting for Mirage on Steam...
Re: Xbox Exec Reveals How Much Money Microsoft Has Made From Halo
@HonestHick IMO I think the success of Halo was a fluke. Fps was the big thing at the time and everything was a doom clone. They really rode the trend but happened to have a unique spin on mechanics and one great lore writer and one great composer they've since ousted and the sued, and it all clicked. But that was it. They copy pasted a few times with extended story and it worked but they really haven't had an original idea since CE, and even that was a fresh spin on what was already there. Myth was their only really unique game.
Re: Rumour: Microsoft To Launch Next-Gen With Series X Successor & Handheld Xbox
@themightyant marketing. The new box is an opportunity to reboot the marketing and boost the brand while having temporary advantages to market.
I'm not saying I believe they'll successfully do that, because Xbox. But that's why these companies do it. And realistically there's no way they can reboot the Series, it's already over. They need a new platform to reboot. Especially if it's a shakeup and disruptor somehow (PC integration, handheld hybrid, SOMETHING to disrupt the status quo.) It's all diminishing returns. It's never going to be anything but diminishing returns ever again unless VR hits it big. It's about marketing, and only about marketing forever more.
I still disagree, strongly about "the games" narrative though. I think that's outdated for a different consumer than the current console consumer. Nintendo excluded, because what they have aren't "great games" what they have is "household child-driven, nostalgia-focused legendary brands and characters on a bigger-than-Disney-itself scale." Nobody else will ever be able to leverage IP exclusivity the way Nintendo can, because nobody but Disney itself has IPs of that nature. Even if they sell lousy games (like half the Pokemon games of the last decade) they'll still outsell everything else by double. Let's be real, modern Pokemon is an Xbox grade series.
I don't think the modern consumer is buying it for "exclusive games from the first party". I don't think the modern console consumer could give two flips about "first party exclusives", and I think both Sony and Microsoft are very, very, very aware of that at this point. They know their install base numbers. They know what people are playing. They know their first party numbers are a fraction of their install base. I don't think a dozen TLOUs are gong to move Xbox. It's all about marketing and getting into people's heads why they should play GTA and the like on an Xbox instead of a PS. And that's where they've failed. They haven't really given reasons why people should play it on an Xbox, and everybody already knows everybody they know plays on a PS. "Because Game Pass" and "Because Halo 6" isn't enough of a reason if you just want to play GTA. Which is MOST console buyers. I think people in the lifelong enthusiast circle are a bit behind the current market in the obsession with 1st party exclusives. We're still reliving N64 vs PSX vs Saturn forever and ever.
Re: Xbox Exec Reveals How Much Money Microsoft Has Made From Halo
@HonestHick If the talent came from apple, I'm pretty sure it's all the people responsible for the S-Mac before they had to beg Steve Jobs to come back from exile they sent him on
Something SERIOUSLY happened at Bungie. They were a nobody, and made Mac games of all things, that's like launching WiiU exclusives. Then they did Halo and it went straight to their heads and never did anything well again. And everything that descends from them seems equally cursed.
Re: Rumour: Microsoft To Launch Next-Gen With Series X Successor & Handheld Xbox
@Real_game_passion Valve doesn't have the reach to put Steamdeck on shelves in every Walmart. Xbox does. That's the key difference. For enthusiasts, Deck, Ally, Legion make sense. For the masses that go to Walmart and see the new handheld console on the endcap and get interested, Deck and Ally never existed to begin with.
@Fenbops Yeah others said it but "biggest tech leap" doesn't mean "biggest jump in raster performance", it's codeword for things like AI or other innovation systems, not raw power.
Pricing, yeah, Phil had said in that interview about the end of Moore's Law and how the console subsidy model is over, and people might have to pay "maybe more than they're used to" for consoles. I'm fully expecting both PS6 and neXtBox to be in the $700-1200 range. And I think that's a falling of point where people stop caring. Consoles were meant to be "cheap" ways to play video games. Once they become major investments and there's plenty of alternatives most people won't bother. Once you get to where consoles are competing in price with PCs, anyone tech inclined will head straight to PC, where the only real negatives were price and convenience, and once they're in similar pricing, the convenience isn't worth paying almost the same to get much less for all but the tech disinclined.
It may be that the future of gaming is 100% handheld hybrids with docks for affordable prices, PCs for enthusiast gaming and a weird niche of "really expensive home consoles" for people with lots of money and little skill and patience.
@sixrings Even the $1600 4090 can't handle 4k60 with full path trace in CP2077 without huge drops. Even FFXVI without RT cripples it to 30fps. Not all the money in the world can fix poor optimization and even decently optimized RT. If you're waiting for that in consoles, set your sights on 2034 or beyond. And also $1200-1500 consoles.
Re: Rumour: Microsoft To Launch Next-Gen With Series X Successor & Handheld Xbox
@themightyant Point 1 doesn't matter, they all just want to sell hardware, not really to sell hardware but to "reinvigorate interest in the brand." But point 2 is a major problem. I think that's a bigger issue for Sony. For MS, Series is stalled beyond recovery, it's lost interest and momentum. If they want Xbox hardware at all they need to "reinvigorate interest in the brand" with "exciting new hardware", and sooner is better. Long term, that's a problem, but Xbox kind of doesn't have a choice. Which is their long term problem, their hand is always forced by past mistakes, which just leads to new mistakes.
OTOH launching first helped with the X360, and if they're trying to cause a disruptive paradigm shift, going first, if it goes beyond specs (adding PC stores etc) could have a perception impact on PS6, IF it's successful. What MS needs most right now is just market growth. Even if PS leapfrogs them after, that initial period of selling as much as they can on hype with no Sony competitor, if they market it right (spoiler: they won't), could get them a foothold in markets they have none in now.
It could also force Sony to overreact and rush PS6, compromising it. Their current management absolutely would do that, too.
I think the problem for MS is it's clear they aren't interested in the "old" traditional console business and are looking to disrupt it (what's weird is that's what they were trying to do in 2001, then somehow morphed into an old traditional console), and the sooner they move onto whatever paradigm they're aiming for (if they can figure out what it is), the sooner they get out of this weird stall and talking out both sides of their mouth.
Will it succeed? It's Xbox, of course it won't But that's not the point....
Also "You'd also lose some of the major advantages consoles have over PC like being able to optimise for fixed hardware, and to subsidise hardware costs. Lastly many think Series S holds back Series X, if you had an even wider set of hardware wouldn't this be amplified?"
Who optimizes for Xbox? Even Xbox doesn't optimize for Xbox. At least the PC optimized version would work as it should on an equivalent PC.
And Phil already said hardware subsidy is over and hardware costs will go up. And then we saw PS5 Pro. Phil called it, and expect the same for XB.
I think the handheld WILL "hold back" Xbox the same way S does. And the rumor that Sony might do a handheld could for PS6 too. I think one thing we know for sure is the industry hit a dead end chasing power above all. Devs are going bankrupt trying to make games to use it, nobody's making healthy profit in the attempt except the established handful and most of them are still selling a PS360 game with bumped gfx. Chasing the graphics dragon may work for Nvidia but it's not working for anyone else. Hardware, even on PC, needs a great reset to be rolled back in what games need. Next gen might be the right time with the introduction of "me too" Switch platforms.
Re: Xbox Exec Reveals How Much Money Microsoft Has Made From Halo
@Tyrant_T103 @themightyant @OldGamer999 The one thing that strikes me about all the things we poke fun at, is that half the biggest fails of the past 5 years in gaming all have one common thread: They're all rooted in Bungie.
There's Bungie itself going downward, there's 343 which fell out of Bungie and made beyond a mess and money hole of Infinite, there's Concord, enough said. Everything that has ever touched Bungie is pure poison. Whatever happened in that organization is so bad it tainted everything connected with it permanently.
There's been other fails, of course, Skull and Bones and SS:KTJL come to mind, but even those don't seem to have failed as hard as the Bungie connected stuff.
Re: Palworld Dev Pocketpair Responds To Nintendo Lawsuit
@Lup They hire an entire building full of lawyers to spend every day for decades pouring over every possible related patient and finding new ones to make for themselves so secure every area that the can own for themselves. Like Nintendo.
For everyone else, you don't, and pay your hundreds of millions when corporate comes knocking, or just let them absorb your company as collateral..
Re: Poll: How Excited Are You For Call Of Duty: Black Ops 6 On Xbox Game Pass?
Nope never bothered with cod.. Bought the two that came out on wiiu. Campaign was kind of fun on the first one. Didn't bother finishing the second one (Call of Doggy). Tried the free one on ps and the auto aim shooting gallery is not for me. Still don't get why it's the biggest thing since sliced bread. Plenty of more interesting stuff to play. Better than fortnite I guess?
Re: Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii Launches February 2025 On Xbox
@mousieone never before have I been so tempted to pay the full $70 for a launch game...
Re: Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii Launches February 2025 On Xbox
@Fiendish-Beaver Play all the games. Play all the games. Do it. Just do it. (Isn't Majima a cameo in LaD though?)
He's kind of the antagonist/protagonist/mostly bats**t nuts in a lovable way part of the main side cast in Kiryu's Y0-6 saga. A sort of frienemy turned friend? He's also the other main playable protag for half of Yakuza 0, so he's been playable before.
But a whole game with his crazy self as a pirate? Yes. This will be awesome.
Dunno about the English dub though. His Japanese VA Ugaki has such a style of his own that the character seems mostly built around that it's hard for me to imagine him without that voice. Kind of the same for Kiryu and Kuroda though. I don't understand half of what he says, but his smooth baritone is Kiryu.
Re: Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii Launches February 2025 On Xbox
OMG, at first I was disappointed about Hawaii again, I play LaD/Yakuza to enjoy Japan, not the US, but Majima gets is own whole game, lol? Sign me up! Instantly better than Y6.
Re: Xbox's Sarah Bond Initially 'Clashed' With Phil Spencer When Working Together
"“I’m not being paid to do what he says,” it read. “I’m being paid to do what he meant.""
LOL if this doesn't sum up the entirety of the Xbox Series experience, I don't know what does.
@Balaam_ I mean we did just read how Hulst blew $400M on the "future" of the company that flamed out in 12 days. I think the takeaways is what we already know. Nobody knows wtf they're doing in the games industry C suites.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@smoreon Ah, my error, I said "SMT1", but it was really Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (or DDS:MT2). SMT1 was basically a remake and reboot of DDSMT2 (same story etc.) So yeah, it was still "MegaTen", just the precursor to the "Shin" part of the series. Either way Pokemon's an Atlus ripoff. Cuter though. Much, much cuter.
Re: Tango Gameworks' New Owner Doesn't Even Expect Hi-Fi RUSH 2 To Make Money
@Elbow I imagine they learned a lot from calisto being a disaster though.
Re: Tango Gameworks' New Owner Doesn't Even Expect Hi-Fi RUSH 2 To Make Money
This guy has a more level head than most of the industry. Instead in shoveling god money into one game that must become the next big thing, having variety of diverse content to get more chances of success. I remember when the industry worked that way and grew until the snack food executives took over and made it shrink.
@NintendoByNature lol good catch, sounds like it!
Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Will Have Drastically Lower Install Sizes
@16BitHero nice, I have my quest 3 and a 6ghz router ready 4090 soon, didn't wait for 5090 because I feel between scalpers and delays it'll be next summer till its available anyway and affording it is questionable. I'm actually considering a Pimax Crystal Super, but I'm not sure finances will allow when it launches in a frew months.
Re: Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Will Have Drastically Lower Install Sizes
I love the small file size as this will be a permanently installed PCVR game for me. But I do wonder how seamless the streaming is, especially for VR where you do NOT want any kind of stutters.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@Banjo- @Cherip-the-Ripper It goes deeper than that. Game Freak was originally a gaming magazine, not a developer, founded by the same 3 guys that have been running it through today (all pre-Nintendo, who technically still does NOT own them, they simply have an investment stake in them which is why they were able to make Tembo and the horse racing game for PC/XB/PS. Nintendo just bought the Pokemon brand and invested into GF.)
Anyway, Tajirii was reviewing SMT1 for the magazine, which is actually the original monster collecting game, though I suspect there could have been something earlier that borrowed from, that was the first complete package. While he was reviewing it and coming up with criticisms he decided he could make a better RPG than SMT. He put together his childhood hobby of bug collecting, and the, then new, idea of the Game Boy Link cable allowing people to connect their games, and the ideas of SMT's demon collecting, and built it out into what became Pokemon, and the rest is history.
So, yes, Pokemon is literally based on/"inspired by" Shin Megami Tensei directly, back when GF was a indie outfit/magazine.
Of course Nintendo, in this case, is suing for patents from code/database implementation (??) not game similarity. But unless they have reason to believe a former employee jumped ship with proprietary information (maybe they did? We don't know, that would be genuine theft), or maybe thy reverse engineered (illegally) the game to find (not directly stolen but "similar things" to send to the patent team).
But what irks me is they've had it in for this game for a while, they were rumored to be pressuring retailers and media to ignore the game, and clearly spent their time digging for dirt to find anything to hang it with and found something, somehow, eventually.
OTOH, Palworld going out of it's way to copy the aesthetic of the #1 franchise in the world was playing with fire, and it's hard to be too sympathetic to them either. If you make a game copying GTA'a asethetic, or pokemon, or WoW, or whatever, you know you're going to have a bad time, it's like having a fireworks display in a DMZ.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@LogicStrikesAgain Lol, the popcorn sounds good but this industry has become a shadow of itself. Well, except Nintendo. They were ALWAYS shady AF 😂
@Scummbuddy Good Old corporate espionage....
Ugh.
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@anoyonmus Yeah I took a look at all that. That still seems amazingly tenuous. Those parents may be legal but they're parents on obvious systems that anyone doing similar things would end up doing largely. Shameless. Legal but shameless. Palworld was shameless in copying the Pokemon aesthetic. Nintendo is shameless in pressuring media and stores to ignore the game and now searching to find something to attack for. Unless someone at palworld is former game freak or obviously reverse engineered and duplicated Pokemon systems and can be fingered, then I really question if Nintendo violated copyright and tos to reverse engineer palworld to find this supposed violation. Is like a pair of bandits saying "wasnt me, he did it"
Re: Nintendo And The Pokémon Company File Lawsuit Against Palworld Developer
@VisitingComet1 seriously with the way the industry is behaving these days if I wasnt already switching to PC I think I'd just switch to phone games. I can't stand supporting these whack jobs anymore.
@anoyonmus That's interesting information. Though it also seems very dubious. Patenting coding techniques? And how would they even know that was violated without reverse engineering palworld which is itself a copyright violation. I think the biggest crime here is that the uspo actually granted these patents to begin with.
Still going after palworld for internal things that probably should never have been patentable seems like such an obvious witch hunt to find "something" to pin on a product they didn't like existing. after Nintendo was allegedly pressuring organizations in Japan to disassociate with pal world.