Whybox

The main issues are requiring downloading for people without good internet; and the inability to backup / archive your game.

I kinda wish writable media was used for physical releases; then you can just download patches / etc right to the device and plug it in wherever to play.

Like say one of those cartridge like hard drives.

Toys R Us always jacked prices up. PS1 games started the $49.99 for new release trend. N64 titles were at $59.99 usually, which would be $120-$200 with inflation now I think.

Phantasy Star 4 was $99.99 or $89.99 (around $100) on release.

My point is, video game development is expensive; I actually think DLC, micro transactions, subscriptions, loss of manuals, and all these schemes companies conjure is because in a normal market they would charge $200-$300 for almost anything that is not Call of Duty sized sales or indie budget.

Right now it's all subsidized by bankruptcies, whales, unpaid overtime, and a handful of super popular titles.

When Saber is thinking of reducing costs, its likely more crunch time/sweat shop development, and less likely more efficient production flows or lowering CEO pay.

@AlwaysPlaying The price-point decision does not take dedicated players into consideration — they will pay $70 or $50 for the game at launch, players that read reviews are likely to wait for the discount. The decision was made for the random person browsing amazon or GameStop whom would just use price to determine value.

Also keep in mind — inflation. Games used to cost up to $80 during the 80s and early 90s in 90s money. I think the only sustainability might be lowered development costs for wide-release $30-$50 titles.

However just like every other industry I think niche titles and tech show-cases costing up to $200 might be reasonable. (4X games being niche often break that $200 across multiple DLC releases — to be honest I'd almost rather have a up-front $200 game broken up via monthly payments during an open 'beta', and at the end of it you get a physical game on a usb stick with a nice tech tree poster of the final game)

What if they release a console whose AI auto-fixes Bethesda releases before the modders do?

Don't forget, digital only pushes out anyone with slow internet, and newer games take up more and more space.

I kinda wish some xbox games were distributed on the external hard driver format, just plug in.... already installed, and just play.

If gaming or movies go 100% digital, it will shut out many rural Americans that don't have the bandwidth for that. This is also why game streaming has yet to do well, the US is too spread out, and even in a major city, Netflix can become unusable on a Friday night.

Music still sells CDs, Vinyl has even made a resurgence, despite the fact that out of all media... music does not require a huge amount of bandwidth to download.

It's not laziness, it's the fact that visuals are prioritized over performance.

You can get 120fps, but you have to reduce what the GPU needs to do.

Samurai Showdown has 120fps, it looks good, but the art-style and the fact that its 2D allows for reducing the GPU labor. Realistic visuals at 4K has a price unfortunately.

Granted.... https://betterprogramming.pub/here-are-the-three-virtues-of-good-programmers-e561e061ea19

M$ will have an incentive to get as many Activision Blizzard games available on their digital stores.

So, the main reasons they'll be stuck in 360-land is either licensing issues or the cost to bring the game over > expected return on investment.

And in some ways, games that... now have one less party involved such as Tony Hawk or Marvel might be more feasable.

M$ and AB could just pull out of UK, then they don't need the CMA's approval.

It's a loss of a market, but... they could just license their stuff to a company in the UK on their behalf.

And it would make a statement.

@koffing Consider: The PlayStation Vita had a 720p screen. If say all you did was upscale or use upscale textures and left the core code alone it would not run well.

Sometimes hardware can accommodate but to be honest… most of the technology improvements has been on the GPU which requires refactoring the render pipeline.

12 and 8 year old games likely used a fixed pipeline (OpenGL ES is what I think PS Vita used), so changing that would be very costly.

But I suspect they in fact did that, however if it pauses for an all out, it’s likely they can’t hold all the combat animations in GPU memory at once on a PC and that pause is the Asset getting loaded in.

@koffing Maybe Digital Foundry will do a video on it. (Though the games might be too niche for them)

Could just be ease of compilation. M$ has really, really tried to make it easy for developers to release a game on both systems. I don't think M$ would have paid money just for that bit, they just made it easier to do.

Samurai Showdon AFAIK does not have a native PS5 version, it has a native XSX version however, again probably because M$ makes such a thing easier for any developer to do.

Could also simply be... the windows versions use the same library (DirectX) as the XSX and XB1 version which again makes a cross-gen release easier.

@UltimateOtaku91 Activision was already owned by Tencent.

I do agree the consolidation of the industry is bad; I would have preferred Activision to just die outright.

It’s quite possible the regulators will require some of the studios to be split off.

This like the Bethesda acquisition was more about M$ Building An IP legacy to match Nintendo.

I mean they now will own Zork.

@UltimateOtaku91 not counting Altus, they have older rpgs such as Shining Force, Skies of Arcadia, Phantasy Star, Monster World, and Sakura Wars.

Valkyria Chronicles is their current JRPG series, which is really good.

@Alpha_Pulse I don’t care. I’m so sick and tired of the same cyclic *****. It’s been brought up 30 years ago, and nothing has happened. And I think nothing will happen again, people will talk and do nothing. I am sick of it, so yes sacrifice whatever it takes to end it.

@John117 I think the problem is more that the company itself and the employees did nothing about it for a long time.

Unfortunately harassment, like any form of bullying has huge benefits for the individual that reaps the social power from it. And humans have a tendency to rewire their heads to just follow the group.

So, the consequences have to be extreme enough that people fear them, until an example is made, until we as gamers value people more than games, then it will continue.

Hence why I hope Activision doesn't just get boycotted before they do some PR apology, but that they get destroyed, and everyone involved has their career ruined and unable to find a job for the rest of their life. Only then will people be afraid enough to behave properly.

Nah, the announcement will include Occulus VR compatibility

If you want to go with crazy rumors that have no bearing in reality: The event will feature Vic Ireland, Yuji Naka, and Kojima to announce Backwards Compatibility with Sega Dreamcast, CD, and Saturn.

The first line up will be: Sonic Jam, Sonic CD, Snatcher, Lunar, Grandia (Saturn version with just unearthed Working Designs translation), Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Skies of Arcadia, and Jet Set Radio (Dreamcast version)

Record of Agarest War
Cave shooters
Eternal Sonata

@UltimateOtaku91 It's possible that a lot of people each have a few individual games they'd like to keep playing. And they are not all the same.

I play JRPGs so my list might be slightly larger than others, since those games tend to age better than others. However, even if say someone wanted 200 games to be available on modern systems, that's a drop in the bucket, and how many are going to be the same as everyone else?

@blinx01 chopin’s music is public domain. The people involved are truly-crescendo and Namco. Considering all parties are still active, it’s more likely just popularity holding that one back. (Or possibly voice acting)

I’d also like to see Fatal Frame and the various Cave shooters drop on BC, and Gungrave.

Lost Odyssey and Final Fantasy IX are available on Xbox one as well. As are some classics like Phantasy Star 4.

IMO, the actual effective thing people could do, is organize boycotts of the launch itself if companies continue this, if you organize well enough one could have completely hosed their launches and numbers, which would have made them take notice. (Imagine if PS5 and Xbox Series X|S all sat on store shelves)

Nope, it's entirely on the companies. They could have for instance done a preorder window, allowed anyone a single preorder, and then queued these people up. Then once they knew number of preorders, and number of produceable stock, handled logistics and messaged people as to about when they would receive theirs.

If everyone knew they would eventually get one, and when, it would deflate scalpers.

The other aspect is, not releasing it around Christmas, its not like they are going to make so many consoles these two months to actually have an increase of sales vs. releasing in February.

All Christmas does is drive up hype, and get more news out about sold out stock and desperate Christmas shoppers.

Not that I would condone violence, but I'm surprised given our current climate, that scalpers haven't had some stronger criticism, given that shipping a unit out reveals where they sleep.

Solution is simple: Before even announcing a release date; put up a window to preorder, and accept all up until the window closes. Then use that to figure out manufacturing; and announce a series of launches when the batches of units are released.