Ryu_Niiyama

Eh. I’ll just put the sub to buying stock.

Hope South of Midnight wins. That game would not let me go until I beat it. Such a lovely adventure.

I’d exited Gamepass when AC Shadows came out because I realized given how little I play and how long it would take for me to beat games I paid full price for I was burning money with gamepass. Especially since I’d been paying full price the whole time. Resubbed this month simply because a few games I wanted for my bday had a nice gp discount and had thought about maybe keeping it for a month or two but then the day after I saw the price hike news. I will let it lapse again. As at this point it is cheaper to buy games normally given the small amount I buy on series x or PS5. My days of 50-100 games a year on Sony and MS systems are over. If I didn’t buy games and played a lot more I could see the value in the sub, but as is for me at least it is a waste. I still like the concept of gamepass but I have other things I can put my money towards. I’m also slightly moving away from gaming. So I am shrinking my focus to one or two systems.

hmm trying to remember which one i have. gotta find the pieces for the drum stand.

LMAO, well played Bethesda.

Just started on gamepass yesterday so that will decide if I buy it or stick with my OG modded game and continue waiting for Skyblivion. I’m not sold on the artstyle.

lol headline almost had me.

For users that don’t have these or just wanna churn and burn (play and not buy) this is a lot of gaming time. Unfortunately for me since Ubisoft games tend to crater (or I buy Collector’s Editions) I have all the Ubisoft games I want to play. Although it did allow me to try the new prince of persia and find out it isn’t for me. So silver lining.

I loved AC Shadows so I wish them well but for now I will be in wait and see mode. I realized I have a few AC games in my backlog I need to finish anyway.

Now I am not the customer for this but I suppose if you buy a system as a “gamepass” machine then this is still a good deal. Not sure how many gamers are purely subs only though.

ouch. I just bought a month to take advantage of the age of mythology sale and to try a few games on my testing list. But I guess after this I’m out again. 30 bucks is my “buy it on sale” price for big games, so no longer a value to keep gamepass. Especially since I don’t play enough to let the sub ride. Kinda glad I went cold turkey when I got AC Shadows. If I didn’t buy games or only had an xbox this would still be a good deal so that may be their angle but this won’t work for me.

Gaming (to me) has felt like it has been pruning itself a bit so I have been able to drop more things or scale back. Been putting the money saved to other things or savings.

I wish there was a way to convert to usb input since there is only one slot.

For licensed games, best bet is to track down the game and OG hardware.

While I want to play NG4, I have no sense of excitement or anticipation. I hope it does well though. Will try it out in a year or two. Will be a nice filler game.

Aside from switch 2 (which while I love to pieces, I originally bought before tariffs hit) I have no desire to upgrade my series x or base ps5. Simply not enough games on those systems for me so I have 0 hype for a successor. I will ride out my current systems and if I don’t see new games I want to play, then Nintendo/PC it is from here on out.

At this point I just wanna marry Hadrian. That being said I look forward to the complete edition so I can pick it up on PC.

Will wait a year to see if it goes to switch 2. If not will buy on series x.

NintendoLife is slipping. I had to come over here to find out the switch announcement.

I’ve always liked that I can use batteries as at this point I have a number of rechargable batteries and it keeps me from being tethered to the console. I mean good battery life is great when it works ( Switch Pro controller lasts forever) but annoying when it doesn’t (I gave up and bought a six foot usb cable for my PS5 because the battery is terrible). At least user replaced batteries give us some control.

welp here goes my normal scramble to buy taiko no tatsujin at the last second. gotta see what the differences are between the switch games (if the songs overlap or are western I will let it pass) are.

@BlazeEmUp Must have been limited time. I just picked mine up with the discount. Ordered online this morning.

nice needed a new controller. don’t care about the skin but for that price, sold.

I too am looking for a second job in this economy.

I would like to play Origins with Veilguard’s artstyle if they keep Origins’ PC focused mechanics. 2 and Inquisition weren’t worth repeating for me. Kinda like how I replay the remake of ME but ignore 2 and 3.

Ouch expansion isn’t until 2026? Well that sucks.

Can’t Wait! No where near ready to play the dlc though. So much to do in the main game!

Well Compulsion is my new studio to watch. Otherwise just TES6 and Blade in the hype pipeline for me.

cool. I will jump back in when new content drops. I wish they would add more romantic companions. I vote for Hadrian.

I do miss when games were truly multiplat and released on everything and a potato. Staggered releases push games down the radar.

edit: and this guy is a nutbar? nevermind.

Gamepass often weeded out games that I might want to beat vs add to the collection but I pretty much no longer buy games full price/day 1 on PS5 or series x at this point (with two exceptions this year). Easier to play other games or wait for sales (especially if I am going to buy the game on another system anyway). Since Black Friday physical sales have been middling the past few years it also means I’m dropping physical as well.

So I will start with, I love the base game.

However, I was hoping that there would be some story closure or additional lore to explain the artifacts (I am fine with the Unity and most of the established colony lore) and it just isn’t there. For a game about exploration and discovery, it makes significant parts of its lore undiscoverable. Part of the reasons for human limitation is our tech, starfield mcguffins that away, so to me it would seem logical that we can find out more about the universe instead of peering deeper into the human psyche of greed and control (Starborn infighting, Humans going to war despite being the last remnants of our species). Without that spark of discovery honestly I kinda wish in game humans just stayed on earth and got wiped out with everything else. Why survive to keep doing the same things over and over?

That for me is what makes TES and to a lesser extent fallout work. I am constantly learning about lore and the world. In Starfield, humanity hasn’t been in space long enough to give the inhabited planets history. So they hold little interest. I just spend my time exploring uninhabited planets at this point.

(all is forgiven if I can marry Hadrian though…)

Curation of project management has to happen otherwise you get stuck in a money pit. However There has to be a better solution than mass layoffs.

One thing I like about Nintendo is they shuffle their less busy or less senior studios around to help out on other internal projects. Keeps everyone working (and thus in a job) and function as a tutoring space as devs can mentor each other so they take knowledge back to their team. I am not saying microsoft doesn’t do that, but perhaps they need to do more of that? Or stop tide hiring.

Second post to not hit word count.

Consumers would still buy less because games cost more while at the same time being more plentiful than ever and lasting longer than ever (digital and BC). Devs still get less ROI if they don’t make a mega hit (which for some is offset by the lump sum gamepass provides) due to increased dev and marketing costs (with companies that don’t market well being lost in the shuffle.). None of these issues are exacerbated by the existence of gamepass or other subs. At best one could argue that people make less impulse buys, but if your game is good/popular then that doesn’t matter as you will still have an increased chance of a sale due to instant access to a ready made consumerbase and word of mouth (see all evergreens…I feel like the only person that doesn’t own (or want) GTA V sometimes). The issue is devs thought gamepass would be a whale farm. And it isn’t. It is more like a rental shop that sales games with the same types of investment returns and habits. And for MS, they hoped it would be like letting everyone test drive the best car on the lot or lease the car for cheap… people aren’t all driving lambos (buying xboxes and switching to being xbox only consumers) like they had hoped. Even still, MS’s expectations make more sense than many of the devs that complain about gamepass or Sony that mocks it (as a marketing ploy, you don't see them canceling their sub service since it is “unsustainable” like folks love to throw out. ). sony’s job is to make their competition sound like a bad idea no matter what. Even if they do something similar.

Obviously as a consumer I am biased But I feel like he is wrong. Gamepass increases ROI and thus lowers the cost of development because MS pays a lump sum to “publish” the game on game pass (and likely to offer a permanent discount). People certainly buy less games, but many also use it as a demo service (in this world where demos are rare), and people forget that the full gaming populace has a low attach rate overall. Only Game Enthusiasts have a massive collection of games or buy a steady stream of games. And a game enthusiast is going to add a game they like to their collection. Using myself as an example, while gamepass didn’t result in more direct xbox sales, I bought the games I enjoyed on xbox on other systems. (Simply because xbox isn’t my primary but at the same time the service ensures I play my xbox regularly instead of when a game that I am going to buy for that system comes out.) Many of those games would have gotten no sale or I would have waited on deep sales, because they didn’t offer a demo and the base price of gaming has gone up to the point that I don’t buy on impulse. Gamepass restores impulse or take a chance buys but it doesn’t decrease the time of development or the initial cost. It does decrease blind faith buys though (but a demo does that as well).

So imo gamepass, whose subscriptions make up a small percentage of gaming and I will bet the subset of gamepass only (as in no more game purchases at all) is much smaller, too small to make a dent in existing issues. And unlike piracy, devs get money and gaming statistics from gamers that were “never going to buy anyway” which is also beneficial feedback.

Where gamepass imo fails is its actual purpose which is to make the xbox ecosystem more enticing. The idea that it is cheaper/easier to buy into the xbox ecosystem because after the initial investment of the system, you have a ready, plentiful and subsidized instant game library has less of a draw for two reasons. Brand loyalty (which drives both devs and consumers.) Devs make games on a bias due to cost of development verses assumed ROI, and gamers buy based on friends, marketing and existing ecosystem buy in. Otherwise the only difference between Xbox and PS and to a lesser extent switch family libraries would be first party exclusives. Because devs would put games on anything that will run it…but they don’t. The other reason is both PS and Nintendo have their own sub systems. No they don’t do the same and are not the same price but if the choice is “ecosystem I already favor/am in with some sort of sub” vs “new ecosystem with expansive sub (gamepass)” then out of convenience and often laziness people are going to stick with the ecosystem they already invest in. People always remark companies aren’t your friends but people aren’t the friends of companies either. Usually unless first party and even then that is a small percentage, people don’t buy on a platform to help out the company/dev/publisher. (Nobody cares about their jobs until layoff season…same as companies really) If gamepass died today there would not be a flood of people buying games to boost the bottom line of devs/publishers (as charity). So many folks are blaming gamepass for things that would happen even if it didn’t exist.

From a pure financials perspective Xbox has been underperforming for a while. MS has other initiatives and a larger platform outside xbox. I do think they are trying to achieve a platform agnostic publisher vision while still offering flagship hardware but it is taking to long to produce results and existing/prior projects didn’t perform as expected. So they are trying to prune what they think will fix things quicker (or float it until they figure out what to do with xbox or sell/fold it). That being said that translates to job losses (across MS not just xbox) and that sucks. MS has a marketing problem imo. They have yet to convince the wider populace why xbox is the better choice considering the library differences between PS and xbox. The multi system gamers like myself aren’t enough to sustain the brand. Especially those of us that xbox isn’t the primary system. The library simply isn’t there.

looking forward to the studios in MS’s portfolio porting to switch 2!

Ok that was tone deaf even for fans of AI. …So I am learning if you want empathy don’t talk to a human. Kinda makes sense actually.

Been playing on switch 2, quite pleased with the port and it serves my needs. Portable and on my primary system. If I notice some serious hardware issues then I will double dip a series x copy but for me at least, this is one less disc to have. same with SF6. People look for different things in gaming. I am looking to play as many games as possible on the systems I play the most. So for me at least that means switch family first unless performance is unbearable. Glad mutiplats mean people can play where they want. Win Win.

Given the cost and development sink of these games and the overlap of specs/audience it makes sense to publish elsewhere.

Ugh. The hits keep on coming. I hope those impacted land on their feet.

Welp here’s hoping my alma mater is in there (only way I would buy this game).

I just keep adding money to my PC fund. At this rate I will have a crazy powerful rig day 1. That being said I am fairly sure this will be my last Bethesda game.

Eh. Gaming has changed over 25 years. Xbox doesn’t have enough exclusives to go at it alone nor does it have the market coverage to be the defacto 3rd party brand. So they are trying to figure out where they fit beyond the hardware faithful. MS is in the unique space of being in most homes via windows so they seem to be trying to pivot xbox to leverage that. Adapt or die. Not saying they will be successful but I commend them for trying.

My least liked entry in the franchise? Absolutely not.

Aside from wanting bethesda to do more with starfield and to give an update on TES6 I only hope that MS is working on an xbox OS. a way for PCs to play xbox games (even if digital only). I want to see them keep investing in the PC and 3rd party publishing space.

I would say South of Midnight. That game was an absolute gem from start to finish as well as welcome representation of sorts. Binged it launch weekend and then bought it right after. Had to have it in the collection.

I usually don’t take swings, but how is Japan not on the chopping block? I feel like they are only selling to expats.

@TheSimulator I never said anything about indie games. Granted they are quite useful to a game library so I disagree either way. Production values of games have a range. Not just flagship or indie, which seems to be what you are implying. I was referring to the range of value. I didn’t mention gamepass either but I also disagree there. The majority of games I play on gamepass are indie or 3rd party. Perhaps you tagged me by mistake? Edit also no need to use expletives.

I hope not. I don’t really feel the series X has reached its potential yet. Too many games straddled one and series s/series x, too many late Playstation ports. Not enough new games, especially not enough exclusives. They shouldn’t just make a new system just for the sake of making one/betting on consumer conditioning. Like it should feel like they can’t make the games they want on current HW. (Obviously R&D overlaps the last years of a console’s life.) But ok I will wait and see. For me at least, this has been my least active gen on xbox or PS. I am at the point that a Nintendo/PC combo will get me all the games I want to play. Especially with sony on PC (MS has been on PC so no shock there). I am a little sad about that.

I haven’t had time to research Microsoft’s finances lately, but I would love to see a push for them to get more exclusive content out. With the number of studios they have they should be able to put a pool of money towards some unique games over the next 2-4 years. (Won’t be AAA because not enough time but not everything has to be a flagship game).

I am still hoping for an Xbox OS though.

Hey people buy the Nintendo branded micro sd cards so I don’t judge. I just feel the price should be lower by now.

He doesn’t sound confident in the game. Prices are gonna go up. That’s both capitalism and inflation doing what they are designed to do (still cheaper than 90’s games), so simply tell me why your game is worth the price. If it is then those that don’t find the price bothersome will pay it.