It isn't real atmos for starters. That requires proprietary tech in the hardware and encoding on the software side (I e. Games) and the subsequent royalties. No dev or publisher that I know of is jumping at using this, nor particularly enthusiastic about the extra time it takes to master true atmos sound, or the latency. Further, The atmos you are getting from xbox is just a compressed approximation and in many ways worse than a 5.1 mix. Regardless, it isn't like this means anything to most who don't have a true atmos setup to appreciate it and you can forget about it with a soundbar, or worse, TV speakers. A similar thing can be said for Dolby vision for games. The novel idea is meaning well and both theoretically have potential to make your experience 1000x better, but the groundwork is way off for this to be practical and viable.
@Banjo- Thirdly, the other point you missed wasn't that having acess to games to a wide variety games is necessarily inherently bad; rather, it's that you're eventually becoming reliant on a service soley to play games. Given how you're paying a subscription for games that you won't have the opportunity to play while focusing on one for a decent amount of time, and may well end up paying more than their worth as they depreciate with time, the fact remains that you're situation is an example of false economy as you're paying a subscription only to invest and play one game at a time potentially while so many more get added that you may also not like. You can't physically play that many games enough to find value in the service unless you're switching playing between games like someone riddled with adhd. There's also the fact that game pass is getting more expensive and you're paying all that money over time for what, when you don't renew the subscription and lose acess to all of them? It's insulting as a matter of principle.
Lastly, I never argued game pass reduces the quality, but you'd be lying if there hasn't been a noticeable issue of xbox's project management since the current gen and since deals went ahead with certain studios. Redfall again is the epitome of this under xbox management (or lackthereof) and is rather interesting, given there has been no sigificant issues with previous games from Arkane until this whole acquisition thing happened. Given how the entirety of last gen was mismanaged and the xbox tactic still remains, albeit pushed more heavily, I have reasonable doubts over leadership and ability of Phil spencer to deliver quality first party games or at least thier management to make the development a smooth process while ensuring quality is checked truthfully at all times. I have reasonable doubts, but if starfield does not deliver, then it will only solidify my stance on xbox's leadership/ ability to manage studios that seemingly haven't had major internal issues before.
@Banjo- Secondly, saying game pass is a good means of exposure is ridiculous given that the services is A) rotated with huge new games and B) despite this, the principle of saturation still applies and is easy for small devs to get buried/ overshadowed by virtue of xbox pushing everything they can via the service - and I very much doubt they are incentivising smaller studios giving a quick glance at it. Regardless, exposure once again does not equate to or gurantee sucess. Similarly, game pass has also proven to be a tactic to reduce the blow of sub par games by thinking that gamers will forgive or at least be somewhat more leniant to the game being bad, simply because they didn't buy it full price and acessed it via a service for a conparitivley lower cost. Need I remind you of redfall and crackdown 3? Perfect game pass fodder examples out the gate as the publicity around them was pretty bad and therefore off-putting, so it stands to reason the service would hopefully offset it to remedy this with xbox thinking people would adopt the above mindset. This is where you misunderstood my stance.
@Banjo- appologies in advance, I've had to stagger my responses due to the chatacter linit.
Firstly, of course xbox would say that, why would they say otherwise when trying to market what they hope to be an attractive service? We both know that information is outdated hype and irrelivent, given that xbox literally stated base sales suffer not too long ago. You forget to mention there's no incentive to buy a game after it is acessed via game pass service. Further, applying that logic, how can you state acess to that game equates to greater than the percentage of revenue a game recives by a flat purchases? They don't. It is the same situation with Spotify providing $0.003 - $0.005 per stream instead of the prior conventional way of making money per track or album. If you support devs, you pay full price. Simple. This is no different to Spotify, only really benefitting the top percent of studios publishing content with the most exposure and foothold in the industry. This all cuminates in the losses over conventional distribution being passed down in ticket sales. You also forget that people follow gaming news and reviews and go into a purchase otherwise knowing what to expect and what they like to then get excited by a game from a known studio being added to the game pass roster. That's how xbox are opperating to cater to supply and demand. What they are not, however, is an advertising platform on behalf of little studios. The exposure on the service/ platfom changes nothing for the popularity of the publisher behind them - even though their quality should speak for itself.
There's an unfortunate realty to the statements here and love or hate Jim Ryan, as a xbox fan, I have to agree with the value issue. See, gamepass is only ever designed to lock you in. No subscription, no games. The more you use this or rely on it, the worse it gets and in return you get no games to keep or iwn and subscribein the hope a fraction if those game appeal. You just cant escape the fact that a large portion of any potential game on there wont be for you andbis falae economy. Even xbox have admitted that gamepass cannibalises base game sales in a Netflix-style games as a service buisness model and I want no part of that. Of course the top percent developers will see benefits from it, but it will screw over small devs similar how to the saturated music industry in light of Spotify has ruined music - or at least how musicians earn money through tangible record sales, not just a percentage. Subsequently, this means the losses are passed on in the music world and have to be recouped in ticket sales at live venues with largley unaffordable tickets. Granted, there's more to it than that with scalping, but there's a similar thing going on with how games are priced on top of the cost of living, inflation and games being more complex and taking longer to develop. Potential exposure in game pass does not equal success and there have been plenty of bad games burried in there that havent been great on there for this very reason. I still remember the crackdown situation and yikes was that a stinker. It's reasonable tobassuke this is the case as the subscription isbperhaps intended to softennthe blow of poor quality and divert accountwbikity innthe lackingnstandards in a game by thinking "oh, well it was just somethingnon game pass anyway" despite the fact that games absolutely should be valued as an individual and the quality speaknfor itself. Again, the redfallnsituation under xboxbis inexcusible and embarrasing. I firmly believe this isn't about value or the customer; rather, as xbox conceded, it's about having a cash cow because they refuse to compete as a platfom in the conventional sense. The mentality that it is "too late" is ridiculous. More competition and sales of xboxs = more reason to own an xbox and is every reason to compete and be competitive, even after the ***** show launch of the xbox one. All xbox need to do is work on building a portfolio of games, building confidence as publisher and incentivising tangible sales while not cannibalising itself with game pass and PC launches simultaneously. Given how xbox are seemingly struggling to manage and take leadership over current existing projects, I have low confidence they can pull off this acquisition even if it goes ahead. I'm not for a bidding wars or a platfom being the next Disney buying up the industry is not good, just to generate profits though a monopoly with other peoples work and put in minimal effort. This will not end well and games will only suffer. You know, besides bethesda and COD devs expressing disdane for the merger and xbox incentive, it overtly seems anti competitive. All xbox have to do is what they did with the 360 and that was a winning formula that Sony akanowleged and rolled with leading to their sucess - as we all know the xbox 360 was a huge sucess over Sony at the time.
Comments 6
Re: A New King Kong Game Is Coming To Xbox Consoles This October
Honestly, this has nothing on the official game of the movie on the 360. Even today that game is an absolute gem and pleasure to play start to finish.
Re: Digital Foundry Highlights Dolby Atmos Issues On Xbox, Playground Games Engineer Responds
It isn't real atmos for starters. That requires proprietary tech in the hardware and encoding on the software side (I e. Games) and the subsequent royalties. No dev or publisher that I know of is jumping at using this, nor particularly enthusiastic about the extra time it takes to master true atmos sound, or the latency. Further, The atmos you are getting from xbox is just a compressed approximation and in many ways worse than a 5.1 mix. Regardless, it isn't like this means anything to most who don't have a true atmos setup to appreciate it and you can forget about it with a soundbar, or worse, TV speakers. A similar thing can be said for Dolby vision for games. The novel idea is meaning well and both theoretically have potential to make your experience 1000x better, but the groundwork is way off for this to be practical and viable.
Re: Jim Ryan: Publishers 'Unanimously' Do Not Like Xbox Game Pass
@Banjo- Thirdly, the other point you missed wasn't that having acess to games to a wide variety games is necessarily inherently bad; rather, it's that you're eventually becoming reliant on a service soley to play games. Given how you're paying a subscription for games that you won't have the opportunity to play while focusing on one for a decent amount of time, and may well end up paying more than their worth as they depreciate with time, the fact remains that you're situation is an example of false economy as you're paying a subscription only to invest and play one game at a time potentially while so many more get added that you may also not like. You can't physically play that many games enough to find value in the service unless you're switching playing between games like someone riddled with adhd. There's also the fact that game pass is getting more expensive and you're paying all that money over time for what, when you don't renew the subscription and lose acess to all of them? It's insulting as a matter of principle.
Lastly, I never argued game pass reduces the quality, but you'd be lying if there hasn't been a noticeable issue of xbox's project management since the current gen and since deals went ahead with certain studios. Redfall again is the epitome of this under xbox management (or lackthereof) and is rather interesting, given there has been no sigificant issues with previous games from Arkane until this whole acquisition thing happened. Given how the entirety of last gen was mismanaged and the xbox tactic still remains, albeit pushed more heavily, I have reasonable doubts over leadership and ability of Phil spencer to deliver quality first party games or at least thier management to make the development a smooth process while ensuring quality is checked truthfully at all times. I have reasonable doubts, but if starfield does not deliver, then it will only solidify my stance on xbox's leadership/ ability to manage studios that seemingly haven't had major internal issues before.
Re: Jim Ryan: Publishers 'Unanimously' Do Not Like Xbox Game Pass
@Banjo- Secondly, saying game pass is a good means of exposure is ridiculous given that the services is A) rotated with huge new games and B) despite this, the principle of saturation still applies and is easy for small devs to get buried/ overshadowed by virtue of xbox pushing everything they can via the service - and I very much doubt they are incentivising smaller studios giving a quick glance at it. Regardless, exposure once again does not equate to or gurantee sucess. Similarly, game pass has also proven to be a tactic to reduce the blow of sub par games by thinking that gamers will forgive or at least be somewhat more leniant to the game being bad, simply because they didn't buy it full price and acessed it via a service for a conparitivley lower cost. Need I remind you of redfall and crackdown 3? Perfect game pass fodder examples out the gate as the publicity around them was pretty bad and therefore off-putting, so it stands to reason the service would hopefully offset it to remedy this with xbox thinking people would adopt the above mindset. This is where you misunderstood my stance.
Re: Jim Ryan: Publishers 'Unanimously' Do Not Like Xbox Game Pass
@Banjo- appologies in advance, I've had to stagger my responses due to the chatacter linit.
Firstly, of course xbox would say that, why would they say otherwise when trying to market what they hope to be an attractive service? We both know that information is outdated hype and irrelivent, given that xbox literally stated base sales suffer not too long ago. You forget to mention there's no incentive to buy a game after it is acessed via game pass service. Further, applying that logic, how can you state acess to that game equates to greater than the percentage of revenue a game recives by a flat purchases? They don't. It is the same situation with Spotify providing $0.003 - $0.005 per stream instead of the prior conventional way of making money per track or album. If you support devs, you pay full price. Simple. This is no different to Spotify, only really benefitting the top percent of studios publishing content with the most exposure and foothold in the industry. This all cuminates in the losses over conventional distribution being passed down in ticket sales. You also forget that people follow gaming news and reviews and go into a purchase otherwise knowing what to expect and what they like to then get excited by a game from a known studio being added to the game pass roster. That's how xbox are opperating to cater to supply and demand. What they are not, however, is an advertising platform on behalf of little studios. The exposure on the service/ platfom changes nothing for the popularity of the publisher behind them - even though their quality should speak for itself.
Re: Jim Ryan: Publishers 'Unanimously' Do Not Like Xbox Game Pass
There's an unfortunate realty to the statements here and love or hate Jim Ryan, as a xbox fan, I have to agree with the value issue. See, gamepass is only ever designed to lock you in. No subscription, no games. The more you use this or rely on it, the worse it gets and in return you get no games to keep or iwn and subscribein the hope a fraction if those game appeal. You just cant escape the fact that a large portion of any potential game on there wont be for you andbis falae economy. Even xbox have admitted that gamepass cannibalises base game sales in a Netflix-style games as a service buisness model and I want no part of that. Of course the top percent developers will see benefits from it, but it will screw over small devs similar how to the saturated music industry in light of Spotify has ruined music - or at least how musicians earn money through tangible record sales, not just a percentage. Subsequently, this means the losses are passed on in the music world and have to be recouped in ticket sales at live venues with largley unaffordable tickets. Granted, there's more to it than that with scalping, but there's a similar thing going on with how games are priced on top of the cost of living, inflation and games being more complex and taking longer to develop. Potential exposure in game pass does not equal success and there have been plenty of bad games burried in there that havent been great on there for this very reason. I still remember the crackdown situation and yikes was that a stinker. It's reasonable tobassuke this is the case as the subscription isbperhaps intended to softennthe blow of poor quality and divert accountwbikity innthe lackingnstandards in a game by thinking "oh, well it was just somethingnon game pass anyway" despite the fact that games absolutely should be valued as an individual and the quality speaknfor itself. Again, the redfallnsituation under xboxbis inexcusible and embarrasing. I firmly believe this isn't about value or the customer; rather, as xbox conceded, it's about having a cash cow because they refuse to compete as a platfom in the conventional sense. The mentality that it is "too late" is ridiculous. More competition and sales of xboxs = more reason to own an xbox and is every reason to compete and be competitive, even after the ***** show launch of the xbox one. All xbox need to do is work on building a portfolio of games, building confidence as publisher and incentivising tangible sales while not cannibalising itself with game pass and PC launches simultaneously. Given how xbox are seemingly struggling to manage and take leadership over current existing projects, I have low confidence they can pull off this acquisition even if it goes ahead. I'm not for a bidding wars or a platfom being the next Disney buying up the industry is not good, just to generate profits though a monopoly with other peoples work and put in minimal effort. This will not end well and games will only suffer. You know, besides bethesda and COD devs expressing disdane for the merger and xbox incentive, it overtly seems anti competitive. All xbox have to do is what they did with the 360 and that was a winning formula that Sony akanowleged and rolled with leading to their sucess - as we all know the xbox 360 was a huge sucess over Sony at the time.