ZeD

Like I said in the other post, game development is heading to a crash.
It is not a good time to be a developer. I feel bad for all those being laid off and those who are currently studying to be game developers.

It feels like the gaming industry is heading face first into a crash. Games are costing way to much now and taking too long. I am not going to say I know all the ins and outs of game development but they do have access to more tools then ever before.

Studios need to tighten their belts and become more lean. Out of all the studios MS own, Bethesda and Todd are the biggest issue. One team making one game ever 10+years. Lets take the salary of the devs for example:

• Average salary in US $110,000
• >500 employees
• 1 year costs is $55m
• over 10 years $550m in salaries alone.
  It just doesn't work.

@Fiendish-Beaver was thinking about this last night. The actual price for the game is £90 (ultimate edition) and the Standard edition was created to make it look like the game is charged at a "normal" price. If that makes sense lol

@Markatron84 so very true. Let mentioned further up, this will be pre ordered purely on the knowing it "should" be good.

@NishimaruX remember when they used the online passes to combat the pre owned market!

I have noticed in my local CEX that the current generation sections are a lot smaller than the previous generations.
I have picked up some crazy bargains in charity shops. Latest one was the entire collection of 'Last of the Summer Wine' for £3.60! 😂

@themightyant code in the box = no trade in option. Just what the publisher wants.

@Coletrain £25 is that value too. I’m beyond that value now so I have to work it out manually 😂

@Coletrain £10 is 12,400 (without any vouchers) and I am on the new top tier (Gold). The only time it is a lot cheaper (I found) is if you auto redeem £5 each month

@NishimaruX very true but it is crazy that we can pre order something that we know very little about. That goes for a lot other games too, of course.

I just hope Sony and Microsoft have got their servers ready for tonight. I have never pre ordered anything on the Xbox but I know Sony take the money at time of pre order. Rockstar will see a lot of return tonight!

@Markatron84 I think the main benefit of pre ordering digitally is that you can pre load but for Xbox, you can pre load any digital game even if you don't own it lol

@Fiendish-Beaver @Coletrain It works out at 1240 point to the £1.
I am currently sitting on 32,795 which is £25. If I keep at my current pace of £12-14 a month, I should have £70+ by November. Then I will have to decide, do I buy games in the end of year sale, or cash all in for GTA6.

What amazes me the most about GTA6 is we have seen no gameplay but it will break pre order records overnight!

@themightyant This would be the same for me. I have both, but if I had to drop one, it would be PS Plus in a heart beat. But, I am locked into a £65 a year deal for Plus Premium. 😂

Also, Game Pass offers Bing Rewards and if you spend a little time each day, you can easily earn £14 a month back. That gets saved up for the bigger sales where I pick up the games I want to own.

I was looking up the studio behind this game and found out it is part of a bigger publisher.
The publisher is 'Kwalee Ltd' and the studio was called 'Kwalee Labds'. If you look at the publisher's published games, there are all one off titles from many developers.
One example is Dev Fallen Tree Games, behind The Precinct.

So the "outside of control" will be the Publisher making cuts. Seems like all Publishers are going through some spring cleaning :/

Ffs, I bought vanguard the other week as I wanted to go back and play the ones I missed.
Oh well 😂

@Banjo- going try to get the MYTHIC one? 😂

@Jayphex
'Maybe it’s just cheaper to licence these types of times on Game Pass rather than developing their own?'

This is what I think is happening. They only have to worry out a one off cost and the game is on the service. Whereas with a studio, there is always a running cost.

This is the result of terrible management of a plan that has not worked.
I believe that the initial plan was to rotate through the main studios (Halo, Gears, Fable, Forza etc) with one studio releasing a big title each year. Much how the CoD titles are done.
And in-between these big titles, the smaller studios step in to create 'filler' games to pad out Game Pass. Some good games were created but they were not the system (or service sellers).
Sony did the same with Studio Japan. That was a great studio for fun smaller games but were quite niche.

I am wondering if MS/Xbox have realised they get more back from spending to get bigger 3rd party games onto Game Pass day 1.

It feels like we are heading into another gaming crash! :/

@McKeownPlayz yeah, just like Sony. If you are not a tent pole studio, be worried

@McKeownPlayz in one of the tweets posted it says Arkane staff are scared

Arkane has also been mentioned as one of the studios

@themightyant

As harsh as the changes are, at least it is going from top down.
Something very similar happened to my company when a new manager stepped in. They looked at all their teams below and had a shuffle. Some did not survive the shuffle

Missing Stranger than Heaven in January

Regarding the transformer games....

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/hasbro-wants-xbox-to-bring-back-activisions-transformers-games-via-game-pass/

Graveyard Keeper's lowest ever price was Free for a short while

One thing I have learnt about gamers.... we are never happy. They always have to find something. 🙄

Anyway, after watching that, I am really excited for the game.

Missed the top part of the email from the article. Like she said in the before, Xbox is not in a good position. Bad decisions in the past etc....

“Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20 billion on ongoing investments in our content, platform and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time,” she wrote. “Going forward, this cannot continue.”

@Skinny-Pete I believe the road map is fan made

@kuu_nousee I had this on PC and if I remember correctly, it had 3 type of tackles; ground, sliding and an over the top sliding tackle that would send players flying.
Oh the memories of turning the ref off and going crazy!

@McKeownPlayz I was thinking about which studios would be affected, and Double Fine were the first to come to mind.

This was going to happen due to a new CEO being put in place. It is always part of the job. Look at the company, see what is working and what is not. Get rid of what is not working and then support that which is working.

But.. because this is Xbox, I am sure the echo chambers of the internet will be reasonable about it all 😂

@themightyant I think the Play Anywhere is for the current Xbox owners. It slowly bridges that gap from console to PC, ready for project Helix.
Get's rid of the needing to buy another version of the games you own to take advantage of a system (ie PS4->5, Switch -> Switch 2).
That is just my thoughts on it

@Banjo- fully agree! The Play Anywhere is blurring the line between Console and PC game. Now it is just a game that you buy once and can play where ever you want (Console, PC, Cloud, Handheld).

More Vampire Survivors? Don't mind if I do!

@Romans12 then pack your bags and go elsewhere! And there is no need to calling some ones comment stupid. Is this a school yard?

Seriously, can we all just not celebrate what amazing games are coming out, no matter where!

@GlasgowGuy I think (hope) we get something closer to November regarding BC.
As for the Series X25 being only 1TB, I think this will be down to the current cost of memory. If you want extra space, there is always the optional upgrade.

Yes for games!

I gave it an A. Incredible showing of games. I don't care about the politics behind games any more. I am lucky to own all consoles and own many games across them. I have favourites for reasons (mainly the controllers) but I am sick of reading comments/posts about it all as it takes away from what is important... the god damn games! And we are eating good!

Just noticed the link I posted above says pre release date, not release date.
This could mean a beta!!!

@Sol4ris it’s what I loved about Geoff’s speech last night. It doesn’t matter where you play!

@Fiendish-Beaver going to leave this here for you….
https://pegi.info/search-pegi?q=Gears+of+war&op=Search&age%5B%5D=&descriptor%5B%5D=&publisher=&platform%5B%5D=&release_year%5B%5D=&page=1&form_build_id=form-NGvYWHsDYooMXE9C4L75YH-OxqEY3hO7vzj48R_c1Zo&form_id=pegi_search_form

Check the date

@Fiendish-Beaver dude... you buy everything anyway lol

Not a strong start but I expect something from the show on Sunday.
Also I have just jumped back into Fallout 76 again, so I am busy with that lol

@Kraven For me this was a pretty weak showing. The 1st party games shown were fine but nothing special. Like you, I will end up getting them at some point as I am a sucker for action adventure titles. Out of all the other stuff, I am excited to get my hands on Rayman and Control, but that will not be until the end of the year for me. (trying to be good an not get games day 1 😂)

This SoP felt safe, which is perfectly fine, but I do miss those amazing high moments of the E3's in the past

If this is the order, it confirms that Fable would have been November and would have not stood a chance against GTA 6. The sooner GTA is out, the better lol

@Skinny-Pete just like when people/news sites say ‘free’ for games added on game pass or other services lol
It’s all down to the wording

@Markatron84 ah, did not know that. Thanks.
I still think the price is at a good point and I have seen that one of the changes is a move to 2.5D which will be interesting to see.

@Skinny-Pete Origins was in Legends upon the original release

Interesting to see a Ubisoft game being removed

@Banjo- with there being individual toggles per game now, I can (hopefully) see a global setting coming soon

@Banjo- it may be best to turn it off for specific games causing problems (such as FH) as a fail safe if they forget to exit the game.

@Nexozi @Banjo- you can also do this from Groups. There is a dedicated group for Quick Resumes.

On a side note to this, I wonder if the loss of data is caused by updates. Even in quick resume, the game exits during an auto title update. If, by some chance, you have not saved in a while (auto or manual), you will loose a little progress