This is a loss for consumers. Massive consolidation, lack of competition. Get ready for them to pull games from PlayStation as soon as they are contractually allowed to. Get ready for everything to be on Game Pass and possibly not on Steam. Worst case: they disable purchasing some games on Game Pass so you always need a subscription.
They (both Microsoft and ActiBlizz) pulled games from Steam before, and they're both back on Steam well ahead of this deal. I don't see why that would change.
We've now seen through court documents and transcripts what many of us suspected in that many of these games and studios that Microsoft purchased for exclusivity were Sony targets for exclusivity as well, so if we had to pick one, the company trailing in the market sounds like the better one to get them as exclusives.
I can only see this as better for competition than Sony running away with the high-end console market, because then there's realistically only one console to buy.
All that said about the above, fuck exclusivity in general.
Did we, though? Or maybe FTC could prevent further consolidation that will eventually result (and is already) in anticompetitive practices?
I can only see this as better for competition than Sony running away with the high-end console market, because then there's realistically only one console to buy.
So now your choices will be: 1) pick the console that has more of your favorite games, or 2) now you have to buy BOTH consoles.
Not when there was a whole ecosystem of platform neutral third-party publishers and additional exclusives are taken out of that. You are not getting more and new games, you are just being required to buy an additional device for the same games. How could it be more competitive if the market is consolidated into less companies?
Because a third party publisher is a supplemental actor to a console market when they make games for both platforms. If the one getting its ass kicked makes those games more scarce on its competitor's console, it becomes more difficult for you, the consumer, to choose one, which means the market got more competitive. Or you buy both, which means both competitors (Nintendo doesn't really count here) are healthy for each getting your sale. If your default answer was to buy a PlayStation and to hell with Xbox, that's less competitive.
The third party video game market is in no danger of monopolizing, on the other hand. Ubisoft/EA/ActiBlizz/Take Two all put their eggs in fewer and fewer baskets, and now the Devolver Digitals, Anna Purnas, TinyBuilds, Focus Homes, Paradoxes, and Embracers of the world are growing to fill the market voids those big publishers left by putting out fewer games.
If the one getting its ass kicked makes those games more scarce on its competitor's console, it becomes more difficult for you, the consumer, to choose one, which means the market got more competitive.
Absolutely not. Splitting up the market between mutually exclusive options is not competition, it is cartel tactics. Competition doesn't happen only at the console-maker level, it involves all gaming companies.
Before if I wanted to play certain games I could choose to buy from ActiBlizz and Microsoft or ActiBlizz and Sony or ActiBlizz and Nintendo. Now I can only buy from Microsoft period. There aren't even more games. There is less choice, less competition.
You shouldn't get too comfortable with what Microsoft is doing this just because as a game company it's in third place. Don't forget that in size, overall, Microsoft is larger than Sony and Nintendo combined, several times. It's not even the first time they do it, they did it to Zenimax/Bethesda too.
Sure I do hope that other smaller publishers grow to take that space, but will that space even be available, considering your suggestion that people might choose to buy a XBox and play those same games?
Absolutely not. Splitting up the market between mutually exclusive options is not competition, it is cartel tactics.
It's how everyone in the market is competing in a bunch of different spaces, like streaming services. It's still increased competition, even if it sucks. And I do think the market would be worse with one high-end console than two.
You shouldn't get too comfortable with what Microsoft is doing this just because as a game company it's in third place.
I'm not comfortable with it. I'm just less comfortable with Sony having such a wide lead in a market with only one other competitor, and given that exclusives are how Sony made that lead, exclusives are how Microsoft is closing it. It doesn't matter how much bigger Microsoft is. Their success comes from other markets, and they're one of only three companies making a console, so that market can't really afford to lose a company in that race unless we're willing to lose consoles altogether. (The way PC gaming is trending, one day we might be, but that's optimistic.)
Sure I do hope that other smaller publishers grow to take that space, but will that space even be available, considering your suggestion that people might choose to buy a XBox and play those same games?
I don't follow you. Smaller third party publishers are thriving and growing, and they're multiplatform. The larger publishers are shrinking their year-on-year offerings and looking for buyers, of which there are few that can afford such a purchase.
It absolutely matters how much bigger Microsoft is, that's why it can pull moves like this to begin with. It's also short-sighted to think that it's healthier for Microsoft to approach Sony in such a manner when it comes at expense of the options customers have. The competitiveness of a market is not solely defined by how close the head-to-head is between the 3 biggest console makers. Seems like people are confusing market dynamics with the Console War, which is itself just a marketing gimmick that got ingrained into gamers' heads.
Good for you though that there are two high-end consoles. I don't see why you talk like there would be just one. Microsoft is not going bankrupt. But maybe, rather than letting Microsoft buy their way to the top as if that was any semblance of healthy competition, maybe you should question why they aren't making more appealing games with the studios they already had. Nintendo doesn't need to buy Ubisoft to be competitive, and in fact they can make games alongside them without any acquisition.
Comes to mind now. Why did you even bother couch that mention of consoles with "high-end"? Underpowered as it may be, Nintendo is competing in the same market. We know that there are people who forgo Horizon to buy Zelda. Sure it's better to have three console-makers competing than two, but here we have proof that there are ways to compete without acquisition, even when by all accounts your offering is the "weakest".
I don't follow you. Smaller third party publishers are thriving and growing, and they're multiplatform. The larger publishers are shrinking their year-on-year offerings and looking for buyers, of which there are few that can afford such a purchase.
Frankly I don't see what you are getting at with this. That there are other third-party publishers doesn't change that the third-party market is diminished by ActiBlizz's acquisition. Devolver and Annapurna may be lovely, but they don't have the size and output to replace it. Sounds like you are just downplaying ActiBlizz's importance as if we didn't just have a massive, long-awaited multiplatform release that is Diablo 4.
And so what if large publishers are looking for buyers? They shouldn't be allowed to sell, consolidation is bad for the industry. They can just deal with it and keep making games. even if Nintendo were to go and buy Ubisoft, it would still be bad for us.
Microsoft isn't in danger of going bankrupt, but they won't stay in a space where they don't make any money.
I separated them into high end consoles because if Xbox leaves the market, there would only be one console capable of running the latest Assassin's Creed or Street Fighter or what have you. That would effectively be a monopoly in that space.
I mentioned other third party publishers because you seemed to be under the impression that the third party space is under threat for losing one player. It's a large player, for sure, but that space is very healthy.
If you're concerned with the size of Microsoft just in general, which absolutely makes sense, because they're enormous, what happened in today's news is that the FTC failed to prevent the acquisition based on the evidence for this market. Their next course of action will be to see if Microsoft should be broken up after the fact under anti trust, and if that happens, as a non expert, I'll wager the gaming department stays together as one entity.
Competition means there's choice. Segregating titles that were once across multiple platforms (choice) into individual platforms (no choice) is anti-competitive.
I can't really break it down more than that and I thought this was obvious...
You do have choice. You have choice between group of exclusives A and group of exclusives B. It's better for competition but worse for the consumer. In order for it to be better for the consumer and competition, you'd need to eliminate the concept of exclusives entirely. And I'm all for that, but I don't know how to make that happen.
Well since exclusives will continue to exist, imagine if, hear me out here, third party titles remained cross platform and group B developed their own set of games at worst through infant studio acquisitions instead of, idk, acquiring the second largest third party publisher in the world (and thus all their studios).
Yeah the poor trillion dollar company couldn’t possibly compete with the billion dollar company by organically building an attractive portfolio. It’s not like they did it before and only lost their position due to their own mishandling of studios and misunderstanding of the market.
They seemingly can't compete, so this is how they're making up for the ground that they lost, because right now the console market is not particularly competitive.
Microsoft creates demand for their system largely by buying up publishers and turning all their future games exclusive, that would otherwise have been multiplatform.
Sony and Nintendo create demand for their system largely by making great games in house, that otherwise never would have existed.
So yes you’re right but one is much shittier than the other.
The games made in house are functionally identical to buying a studio that already existed. It's a game that can't be played anywhere else for arbitrary business reasons. I'd consider Sony's shittier, because I have to wait two years for a PC port, and Nintendo's shittier still because those games will never legally leave their platform.
The “pick one” mentality may come from the inherent freedom of Activision’s owners. They don’t see any further way for the publisher to grow, so they seek the next logical outcome for themselves: Acquisition. That’s always going to come from a company large enough to be a major force in video games.
“Pick neither” is telling them they are not allowed to do anything with their company.
They could grow by making more games that sell well. More offshoot studios so they can have more parallel production.
If the ONLY way they can grow is to consolidate, then they are as big as they are going to get then. Tough titties. They have a minor duty to shareholders to turn a profit, not to grow at all costs. That's the problem with current capitalism and will lead to effective monopolies.
I'm opposed to this acquisition but let's be clear: Activision doesn't have a "minor duty to shareholders". They have a fiduciary duty to shareholders.
Yes. But the duty is to put the best interests of the company first. This is ambiguous because it can mean long-term health and stability, or as is more common lately, companies have decided that short-term profits over all else.
So there is no duty to "grow at any cost". They can be profitable and stable and define that as the best interests of the company.
I see a lot of people using argument #2 and it's really short-sighted to treat acquisition the same as exclusivity deals. However much I don't like either, acquisitions are clearly worse. If you had to pick one, why would you wouldn't just leave it as case-by-case exclusivity deals?
Say, SquareEnix and Atlus are fully capable of releasing games for other consoles even with all the exclusives they release for Playstation. And nothing stopped Microsoft from waving a wad of cash their way to change their minds.
There is absolutely no way such a large acquisition will be better for competition. The publishers become unable to make their own platform decisions, no matter what benefits there are. You are losing sight of the market as a whole and the independence of studios by focusing exclusively on who gets the #1 console crown.
If you had to pick one, why would you wouldn't just leave it as case-by-case exclusivity deals?
A case-by-case exclusivity deal for a big publisher like Activision is just exclusivity on about 4 franchises. Let's be real. They don't make much more than that these days, which is why those big publishers are looking to sell now that they've thoroughly un-diversified themselves. I don't get to pick which option Microsoft went with, but functionally, it's not any different.
There is absolutely no way such a large acquisition will be better for competition.
I don't know you, but there's a pretty good chance you own a PlayStation 5 and not an Xbox Series X/S. They play almost exactly the same games basically exactly as well as one another, but PS5 is running away with the market. There's no world where PS5 having so little competition from Xbox is good for anyone. We're closer to a world with zero consoles than we are to a world where another competitor can break into the market anyway, so I say burn down the way exclusives and consoles work in general (like their own little monopolies on their digital storefronts), but this will result in a more competitive console market than we have now.
I really don't see how your arguments contribute to your point. Even if Activision Blizzard only had 4 franchises, an acquisition would still be much more drastic than an exclusivity deal. It is not the same as making deals for all franchises.
For an example, as much as Final Fantasy XVI is exclusive to PS5, the new Dragon Quest Monsters will be exclusive for the Switch. SquareEnix can choose what platforms to release what games for, including all of them if they want to.
And to be clear. No, Activision Blizzard doesn't only have 4 franchises, it has a whole portfolio of franchises, plus many studios under their umbrella. Even if the argument is that they aren't making games for some franchises, Microsoft could still hire them to make games for different franchises as an exclusive, without acquiring them.
Yes it would be good if Playstation had more competition from XBox, but I have absolutely no confidence that they will get there just by acquiring publishers. They already acquired Zenimax/Bethesda and Redfall turned out to be a disappointment. Same for Halo Infinite. I also remember how pretty much every Rare franchise died, they only have a single game going. Microsoft doesn't need to buy their way into becoming competitive, and there is no good that will come from doing that, it will only come at an expense of multiplatform games. What they need is to actually fund and make good games. Sony is making God of War and Last of Us with their own studios, they don't need to buy exclusivity for that. Same with Nintendo making Mario and Zelda. What is Microsoft making? What good would it be to let them have even more publishers and franchises?
Even if the argument is that they aren't making games for some franchises, Microsoft could still hire them to make games for different franchises as an exclusive, without acquiring them.
They aren't making games for most of the franchises they own. Current market forces certainly aren't inspiring them to do so. Contracting them to make a new Metal Arms, for instance, means they're allocating personnel away from their money makers, which raises the price of that contract to make up for the opportunity cost.
Yes it would be good if Playstation had more competition from XBox, but I have absolutely no confidence that they will get there just by acquiring publishers.
I have absolutely no confidence that they'll get there without it. And to be clear: I hate that. I hate that when Sony gets an exclusive game, it means I have to wait two years to play it on PC. I hate that my friends hate the new PS5 controller but have to use it because that's where you play God of War. But exclusives dictate a console's success, as much as I wish they didn't. So even if Xbox has quick resume and doesn't arbitrarily make its old controllers incapable of working on newer games that don't use the new controller features like Sony does, two friendlier features in the Xbox camp that would influence a purchasing decision in a perfect world, the customer is hardly ever going to pick Xbox, because the market decided exclusives matter that much.
They already acquired Zenimax/Bethesda and Redfall turned out to be a disappointment.
A game that was in production for a long time before it became a Microsoft product.
Sony is making God of War and Last of Us with their own studios, they don't need to buy exclusivity for that.
There is no functional difference between this and buying other studios, especially since Naughty Dog was also a studio acquisition. Given enough time in the rearview mirror, Activision-Blizzard and Bethesda games will be treated the same way as you just treated that one.
What is Microsoft making? What good would it be to let them have even more publishers and franchises?
We just saw a ton of games that they're making. And games these days just take so much longer to make, at least at the scale that Microsoft, Sony, and very few other companies insist on making them. Rocksteady has been working for 8 years on one game. The average AAA game has a 5+ year dev cycle now, which is absurd. The next game from Sony Santa Monica likely won't come out until there's a PlayStation 6. The likes of InXile, Obsidian, and Double Fine will have quicker turnaround times than most, and even those will take 3+ years. So with that perspective, the Microsoft acquisitions are fairly recent and are only soon going to start bearing fruit like Hellblade; not even Starfield counts in that discussion.
I have absolutely no confidence that they'll get there without it.
They already have Zenimax and we haven't much to show for it. It was releasing more games before it was acquired. But I'll grant that not enough time has passed, though I'd say if Redfall wasn't up to shape they could and should have changed the release plans.
But for Rare plenty of time has passed. What do they have to show for it? Sea of Thieves and a Killer Instinct game for the whole of the last decade. Banjo has been declared dead, Perfect Dark keeps getting postponed, and nothing else new. It doesn't bode well.
We just saw a ton of games that they're making.
It wasn't all that many, and most of it likely came at expense of what would previously be multiplatform games. Zenimax would still be releasing games if they hadn't been acquired. Sure, exclusives benefit them but this "competition" was really a net loss for players who don't have Microsoft platforms. It came at expense of the third-party market.
There is no functional difference between this and buying other studios, especially since Naughty Dog was also a studio acquisition.
There is a marked difference in scale. If they just bought Treyarch or Toys For Bob that wouldn't be a big deal. But they are bulk buying publishers along with all their studio subsidiaries. Activision Blizzard by itself is the 6th largest publisher. This is not just getting a studio. The comparisons being made to excuse Microsoft's tactics are really glossing over what a drastic sweeping takeover they are doing, All the while they whine about how tiny and feeble they are, because this massive company doesn't dominate the gaming market also.
But for Rare plenty of time has passed. What do they have to show for it? Sea of Thieves and a Killer Instinct game for the whole of the last decade.
Killer Instinct was a Rare property but not developed by Rare. And you're underselling how hugely successful Sea of Thieves has been. (Not that I understand it; the game seems incredibly shallow, but it found a huge audience.) We have a pretty thorough accounting of what Rare's been doing, and Sea of Thieves happened under new management at Xbox that wasn't running the show post-Nuts-and-Bolts.
It wasn't all that many, and most of it likely came at expense of what would previously be multiplatform games. Zenimax would still be releasing games if they hadn't been acquired. Sure, exclusives benefit them but this "competition" was really a net loss for players who don't have Microsoft platforms. It came at expense of the third-party market.
The same is true of Sony's acquisitions.
If you want to talk about scale, the industry in general, especially the type of game that sells these consoles, is so much bigger than it was in the 90s. If you're buying a studio in an attempt to compete with a console outselling yours 5:1, you're not buying a studio with a few dozen people who sold a few hundred thousand copies of a game. You're buying a company with hundreds or thousands of people who sell millions of copies and a large percent of those customers buy DLC and microtransactions, because that's what moves the needle. A large portion of those customers, by the way, only bought a PlayStation for that game, because that game was associated with PlayStation in the marketing, even though it was also available on Xbox.
They (both Microsoft and ActiBlizz) pulled games from Steam before, and they're both back on Steam well ahead of this deal. I don't see why that would change.
There's a lot of tangible reasons for Microsoft to pull the plug on Steam game sales.
They want to focus Microsoft products as "Cloud-First" wherever possible, and selling copies on Steam hurts this initiative.
They would probably prefer to not give Valve 30% revenue on every game sold for IPs that they own and have their own means of distribution (and even more now that they own Battle.Net) For all businesses, this is simply a case of maximizing profits.
They aren't happy that Valve are essentially letting people run native windows applications on non-windows platforms.
They view the Steam Deck as a potential competitor to the Xbox or other mobile game initiatives they might have.
They would still love it if we all used Windows Store for downloads wherever possible, which is why they have lately been streamlining the process of getting products on that storefront.
Those are reasons. I don't know if they would actually follow through and there are reasons for them to not do it, but every decision is a case of weighing the negatives and the positives. It really depends on if Microsoft cares about the public perception of forcing people to use their own store or not. Currently, they do care about forcing people onto clients, but that might not always be the case forever.
They did care about people using their own store, and it was an undeniable failure, which is why they're back on Steam, where they make more money. They'd have to decide to unlearn those lessons to take their games back off of Steam again.
There are people who would be okay if it were Sony making the acquisition, but I want to believe that most people who are against it feel that no large company should be allowed to buy another large company.
It’s like, does no one remember what Microsoft did in the 90s? They were literally forbidding PC manufacturers from not selling any systems that didn’t include windows.
This deal is bad. It rewards shitty individuals and shitty companies, and hurts consumers and employees. This deal will be a calendar marker of when the gaming industry started to fall. Like when Disney bought Marvel and LucasArts.
If they are truly a pile of shit, then they should fail. MS just wants 2 things: 1) big name games to drive purchase of their console, 2) that sweeeeet MTX money from CoD and King.
Nah, I don't see things this way. Microsoft has been generous with its IP, in contrast to Sony, which keeps its games (and third party games, as was the case with Street Fighter 5) exclusive. Microsoft has licensed its biggest titles to the Switch and even the Playstation 4, and it has a history of cross-platform publishing that goes back decades. For instance, games in the Banjo-Kazooie series were released for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. There's no reason to believe Microsoft will change that strategy, especially with the Xbox Series lagging so far behind its competitors in sales.
If Microsoft suddenly tightens the reins on its IP, consumers will spite them for it. After the Xbox One debacle, they know better than to force unwanted changes to the status quo of this industry.
Nintendo is not a competitor for MS or Sony. They operate in different spheres of gaming and Nintendo has no intention of competing with them.
Is Halo on Playstation? Of course not. MS has already said future Bethesda games (not Starfield, it has a contract) will NOT be coming to PlayStation. MS has even "lamented" that exclusivity is how you compete in current console markets.
I don't think that's correct. Sure neither of the others is making something Mario, but they are making open world action games and JRPGs, something that Sony also does. The perception of the Switch as a casual device compared to the PS5 and XSX is something that only exists in small hardcore gaming communities, it doesn't represent the general console-buying public.
A mobile game maybe doesn't compete with MS or Sony. Nintendo absolutely does.
All the NFT stuff has gone above and beyond to be as dumb as possible. There was one possible use case, the proof of uniqueness, showing that you genuinely own the one and only, and all others are copies.
So people used this technology to mass produce copies of the least unique things, because of course the actual use case is a pyramid scheme to scam people for money, and all the value of a blockchain item is the promise that it will make the buyer more money.
To be fair, there are good mobile games. But like PC games you have to actually be willing to pay for them (with some rare exceptions). It's also likely that those games are multi-platform and you've probably already seen them on PC.
Wasnt Jeff directing while Overwatch was experiencing 3 years of drought?
Spiritually I find it died way earlier, but I can see it being the 'official death' when he left
if it's like elder scrolls online I don't want anything to do with it. I was so excited for it because the only thing I wanted from Skyrim was multiplayer. but ... well .... you know the rest.
it's been 6 years since MP4 was announced. and it will be literally the only reason I buy a switch.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of the last big releases on Switch.
We know that the Switch’s successor won’t be out until FY2024, so April 2024 at the earliest. There’s also some indication that Nintendo is going to build a bit of a stockpile before launching to reduce scalping. I think that fall 2024 is the earliest realistic launch window. Even then, it’s possible that Nintendo keeps releasing games for the Switch after the next console launch (as Sony has kept the PS4 going post-PS5).
Nintendo has a packed release schedule through November 2023 and then there’s nothing. The only confirmed games with no release date are Luigi’s Mansion 2, Metroid Prime 4, and the Princess Peach game. It’s possible that those all come out next year for the Switch.
I was about to say, Nintendo seems to already be doing this, having learned their lesson from the Metroid Prime 4 debacle.
After the MP4 reset, I think Tears of the Kingdom is the only Nintendo game that was announced more than a few months ahead of its release. They even started shadow-dropping games this year.
I have a bunch of controllers that I got to use on a Linux system, and finally settled on the 8bitdo Ultimate for its Hall Effect analog sticks after nearly every other controller I had (a bunch of XBox or XBox clones) exhibited some degree of analog drift. Note that only their Bluetooth model has the Hall Effect sticks -- there are multiple Ultimate controllers.
I don't remember potentiometer-based analog sticks being this problematic twenty years back, so I'm not sure if the controller hardware is just running with a more-aggressively-small dead zone today or what.
Had moved away from a Logitech F710, which I was happy with except for the fact that some device somewhere near me had started occasionally causing its proprietary Logitech protocol to see drop-outs that Bluetooth controllers didn't see. Plus, OP wants to use his thing with an Android device, so he probably wants to stick with Bluetooth anyway.
I'd historically preferred Playstation-style controllers, but too many games detect and nicely configure themselves for X-box controllers and don't reasonably deal with the Dual Sense I tried. Also, there are few PC games that leverage some of the unusual hardware features that the Dual Sense has, so you're paying in money and weight for something that you won't be using.
While I like the controller itself and it's presently the best I've tried, I'll mention two major caveats:
It does not have rumble motors. This makes it lighter, but it is a feature that I would rather have than not. There are some PC games that do make use of rumble motors.
It has a Nintendo-style button layout rather than an X-Box style layout (at least the Hall Effect version does). 8bitdo does sell replacement buttons with XBox-style colors, if you're willing to deal with replacing them and remapping the buttons in software.
Also, specifically for OP's situation, it does not support pairing to multiple devices. I have a keyboard that can pair to three and then just choose the destination device with a wheel. He may want that, if there are game controllers that can do that, unless he's willing to get multiple controllers.
The biggest competitor to Star Citizen right now is Elite: Dangerous. I've played it a lot and it's pretty good. You can play solo or online, too. It can feel a bit slow and it doesn't hold your hand when it comes to learning how to play. There's combat, trading, and exploration. Also pretty active communities online.
If you want to go back in time a bit, there's also the X series from Egosoft that's spanned back many years. There are a few installments and more is being developed. These games are definitely more colorful in several ways than Elite: Dangerous. More of a focus on the Rule of Cool than trying to be real sims.
Haven't played Star Wars: Squadrons, so I don't know the state of the multiplayer side of things. It does offer a solo story mode, apparently. May be worth looking into.
Every now and again I'll think about games like Freelancer, Freelancer 2, X-Wing, and the Wing Commander franchise for straight sit-in-cockpit combat action. Those are very old- early Mid 1990's to early 2000's. If you feel like something retro and can run them, those are options. I wish we had more games styled after those early space sims.
I have to second the Elite Dangerous vote here. Especially if you find an online community to play with. It is part space flight sim, part trading and now part fps. It has its problems, but the expansive scope of it always amazes.
Groups like The Buur Pit are new player friendly and will help a new commander learn. Game can also be had fairly cheaply on its frequent spelials.
Any tips/thoughts/input for a new ED player then? If I were to give it a go. I don't know a whole lot about the game but I do have HOTAS/HOSAS setups I can use. One better than the other?
I am using a Logitech x52 setup at the moment. It is busy game from a control scheme perspective. The flight model is more simulation than arcade so expect complexity.
I will have a look for a few getting started guides if you are interested.
That’d be much appreciated. From my time in star citizen I don’t mind sim style play over arcade. I think I might prefer it honestly - or at least some sort of balance
Well if you can deel with a very crusty Latvian ass, look for The Yamiks on youtube. He loves / hates the game, but knowledge is good. Agreed with the tutorials mentioned by @HidingCat.
Another YouTube channel worth exploring is Better Atronomy. A level headed German sounding bloke who is very technical.
There is an Elite Dangerous magazine here that had not taken off yet, but I am monitoring it from time to time. Ask questions.
Open can be dangerous, but the galaxy is vast. Expect ganking in high traffic systems. Fly in either Private or Solo when visiting engineering systems. There is a new commander safe zone that should at least get you started.
The game, is at best incomplete. I use inara.cz extensively as a companion resource. But that is for when you have left the starter area.
Never Fly without a Rebuy is a motto to live by.
Eddit to remove mention of eddb.io, which is no more. Inara does most things eddb did almost as well.
Don't skip the tutorials. Learn to dock without the autodock. Never fly without a rebuy (the amount to pay to respawn with your previous ship's setup should you die, otherwise you lose everything)!
HOTAS and HOSAS are welcome, they definitely add to the experience. HOSAS is better for combat but HOTAS is really nice too. I'm on a HOTAS myself.
I'm gonna chime in and say you don't need a HOTAS setup, I played quite well on just a steam controller, and that translated exactly into the steam deck.
Play co-op! You join someone's ship and shoot out of one of their turrets or fighters.
It's a great way to meet some people to talk with. It's also nice to play on the same team as other people - much of SF seems - whats the word? Not antisocial - imagine like people who walk by when you're eating lunch, and shove you into the bushes for the lulz. So it's nice to find people with a common goal.
More importantly for new players, it can also be a good way of checking out more expensive ships, and it can be a good way of making money - if the person you join can finish the mission.
Elite Dangerous has been on the downswing for a while now. May not be the greatest time to dive in, when at least their biggest fans on YouTube are talking about chances the company will stop development.
On the other hand, they have jacked up the money rewards for discovering new life on planets, so the grind is way less now. So it is actually not a bad time if you want to get in, get all the ships you want, and leave when starfield comes out.
This game was infuriating for the enormous wasted potential that it was. From the day of launch they said they were planning to never update it, add to it, or expand it.
It could have been the successor to X-Wing/TIE Fighter, but they starved it from the beginning. The multiplayer was bad and they only had a few servers in the US, so it was too laggy for everyone overseas.
The game could have been something great, but it was dead out the door.
If you haven't already, it might be worth checking out TIE Fighter Total Conversion. It's a fan remake of TIE Fighter built on a massively modded X-Wing Alliance engine that works well on modern computers. It has a pretty faithful recreation of the original TIE Fighter (plus collector's CD content) campaign, and a reimagined version of it using things that weren't possible in the original game engine. https://www.moddb.com/mods/tie-fighter-total-conversion-tftc
You'll need a copy of X-Wing Alliance (available cheap on gog) to run it.
Those aren't the only 2 choices though. Ideally we'd get something like modern visuals on top of the game design of 15-20 years ago. Remember when you could host your own server and play with dozens of people? Remember college LAN parties of Wolfenstein with 60+ players? That's what this could have been. We need TF2 in space, but we got Overwatch.
Squadron's ugly flaw (aside from the bad latency caused by US-only servers) was that they copied the current trend in pvp games where it's a 5v5 battle and everything has to be "balanced." It was like playing crappy football with Star Wars ships. The objectives were pathetic and matchmaking was so bad that the games were almost always a pathetic wipe because one side was a team of 5 near-pro level gamers vs 5 solo newbies.
Still, it was gorgeous. And in VR it was chef's kiss
With some patching it could live up to its potential, but as it is it's sadly a dream that never came true.
I guess, but realistically EA doesn't work that way. Especially under disney licensing terms. Overall, I kinda appreciated squadrons for being a no BS, give the fans what they want kinda game. Trying to do live service updates with Disney licensing terms just doesn't work- look at avengers and fan reactions to battlefront on release.
They still trying to gaslight lmao.
CDPR have good writers and terrible management. Cyberpunk 2077 was in development for 7 years, one of the most expensive games ever made and still released as a pile of shit marketed behind false promises. Where the money went and what happened during that time, only they know, but something went seriously wrong.
Lol nah. Game was a mess. Nowhere near feature parity with what they promised, bugs galore, awful police AI, and the last gen versions were literally unplayable to the point that they were removed from stores.
For Video games subtitles are ok. But with movies, I have them. They are too diszracting for me so I read subtitles all the time instead of watching the movie. If I wanted to read a book, I would read a book...
I know this is about video games but for movies it's often the case that they were mixed for a surround sound system and then just combined for the stereo out that most people end up using.
That's the answer in my book. I mainly use it for that very same purpose. Additionally, new games with their own game worlds and confusing made up words that sound different between characters.
Rarely, if ever. But if I watch something local it is usually news, game shows or something like that, not big screen productions that usually suffer from this "loud sound, silent speech" annoyance.
Unless it's some rural dialect. Then all bets are off. But then I have the same problem with many English dialects.
Germans are so used to dubs with comparatively louder voices due to it being recorded in a studio, that we also mix our movies that way.
I believe that the different "school" of filmmaking in Germany also plays a part. Classical german movies are more similar to stageplays with a focus on dialogues and the story itself, at the expense of a bit of immersion. Hollywood type movies on the other hand are meant to be watched on a big screen and try to be as true to life in dialogues as they can, meaning that they include noise and cut off sentences in the middle to make it seem like it wasnt acted at all, but that impedes the intelligibility of the things being said if you dont have a good audio setup. So you have the difference between clear but a bit stiff and immersive but sometimes intelligible.
Poor sound mixing is exactly why I watch most things with subs by default now. I got sick of constantly having to turn the volume up to hear dialogue and then quickly back down to avoid massive explosions etc.
I just encountered that when playing Fallout 76 for the first time. When I first started up the game everything was so loud so I turned it down to what I thought would be a good level. But when I played a holotape in a terminal it was so quiet AND even when I had subtitles turned on for some reason they didn't appear :/
And I feel this is an escalating problem. Sound mixing is generally horrible in both games and movies/TV. Unless you blow out your speakers during the higher peaks, you've got no chance of hearing dialogue.
Does anyone have any clue to why this is such a well-spread phenomenon? Why is it like this? I mean, I get it (kinda) at a cinema, but I think it's way overplayed there as well.
It seems tv audio engineers expect everyone to have a high end theater speaker setup: that's the only way to be able to hear it, apart from to use headphones, which is cheaper, but it's not a great solution. You'd think apps like netflix and Disney plus would be able to include a setting like video games that selects a different audio mix, or separate tracks for dialogue and sfx each with thier own volume slider.
For films, you have idiots like Christopher Nolan who's head is so far up his own ass he can probably see daylight. He purposefully mixes the audio poorly so nobody can hear anything, and likes it that way because .... something something something immersion artsy bullshit. I couldn't even finish watching Tenet, we turned it off halfway through because we had zero clue what was going on, and I will refuse to ever watch another Nolan film after that.
For games, I think it's just poor mixing, I doubt they mean to do it on purpose. They just don't invest in the proper audio people.
Interesting, I thought the sound mixing in films was poor because it was designed for cinema viewing and then not optimised for home setups. But I don't watch many movies on the big screen anymore. I thought at least some people were enjoying good quality mixing haha
That's a big part of it. And people can have so many different set ups now too. And there isn't time/funding to redo the mix for them all. There was a good article that covered some of the various reasons, I can't find it but some others...
The article I'm thinking of also mentioned mics changing, and actors not having to speak directly into it to get anything. So it opens up far more realistic acting, but makes capturing/mixing that dialogue more difficult.
That's really interesting too! I guess there are so many combinations of recording equipment, the quality of the mix, the streaming services spec, and the consumers set up, that they can't accommodate everyone.
I honestly am a huge Nolan fan but could not agree more with his audio lately. I was really frustrated in the theater during Dunkirk trying to figure out what the heck Tom Hardy was saying. Tenet, at times, was also pretty bad. I still really liked both movies, but they would have been better experiences if I could have not dedicated so many resources to hear a word in a garbled mess of voice.
Nolan movies are meant to be loud. Obnoxiously loud. I saw Dunkirk in 70mm IMAX and it was punishingly loud, and amazing.
Basically, Nolan movies can't be watched in any shared or multi-unit living situations. You need to crank them to "this is going to piss off the neighbours" volume. But that's specific to the types of movies he makes, which are experiences more than narratives.
Part of it is they are mixed in professional environments (studios) for professional environments (cinema).
Part of it is they can't mix for someone with a 10 year old tv using its built in speakers in a shared living room with street noise, 15 feet from the sofa and a brand new TV through a sound bar in a rural mansion 8 feet from the sofa, and someone using airpods over Bluetooth.
Plus people tend to listen to things at a volume similar to conversational level, but in a cinema you listen to things at a volume that would be considered impolite to your neighbors if you did it in an apartment block.
Finally, sound engineers are artists and dynamics (louder and quieter parts) are part of their craft. Actors are artists and their vocal performances also have dynamics.
A question to ask yourself is have you considered more actively participating in the sound delivery methods of your media? I'm not here to say "all people are watching TV wrong!" but I would ask if most people have even thought carefully about their sound delivery choices, their own EQ settings in their TV, how well tuned their environment is for active listening, and if they just need to turn their volume up?
I appreciate not everyone can blaze the sound on max — but if you do have to sacrifice some volume, maybe part of that tradeoff is clarity of dialogue?
Even in theaters, however, the sound mixing in Tenet was way off. And that may be bad setups at the theaters, but the fact that the complaint was so widespread indicates that the blame likely rests elsewhere.
You say this like there aren't plenty of movies and shows that don't have this problem at all, even YouTubers generally knock this out of the park.
Dialogue is one of the only things that should always be clear, it exists to tell the story and missing critical parts of that because they can't be assed to make sure it sounds half decent in more than one specific environment using one specific audio technology is not something I'm willing to support.
Nolan is just partially deaf imo. Dynamic Range is nice and especially for the 5.1 mix it's great. Still dialogue should be understandable and at least be mostly mixed to the center channel so I can boost it if I want.
Also the 2.1 mix needs to focus on dialogue. No one who watches in 2.1 cares for the dynamic range and subbass stuff imho.
I'm not saying they need to mix for everyone, but how hard is it to make a decent 2.1 channel mix? That would cover 99% of the people complaining with minimal effort.
This is why I think dynamic range compression should be a standard feature for TVs, phones, stereos, PCs and other consumer devices that output audio. Something to even out quiet dialogue and loud explosions would be a godsend for movie watchers everywhere.
I know Windows has a compressor of sorts built in, the audio equalization feature, and I wish there were a good equivalent for this on Linux.
Truth be told, with my auditory processing issues, I'd probably still be using subtitles in tandem with compression/equalization if it were an option. BUT, it'd still be nice to have for watching things late at night without waking other people up.
Funnily enough, watching TV in bed is the other reason I started watching with subs! I've since switched to bluetooth headphones for that and I find I don't usually need subtitles if I'm using them.
You don't. In The Netherlands we always watch with subtitles in theaters and at home for foreign movies/series (and sometimes even Dutch due to the mixing issues and trying to eat snacks ;) ). You read these without looking a them directly.
Huge agree. If I can watch Redline and Dead Leaves in their original language with English subtitles first and miss nothing when compared to watching the English dub after the fact, I think I can catch pretty much whatever most movies will throw at me just fine.
I don’t have to actually read them slowly, its like an extra thing giving me information. Like seeing words and hearing them in one go. It’s not distracting in the slightest
Where it does apply, you got an excuse for a second viewing.
Plus if we're talking about games, you generally should have some awareness of your surroundings even when watching subtitles. If you didn't, just paying attention to your UI while playing would be difficult.
As if my ADHD ass could choose to only pay attention to the subtitles anyway?
It's like reading a road sign while driving on the freeway. I can read the sign out of my peripheral vision, without focusing on it or taking my eyes off the road. I assumed everyone did this?
Agreed. I've always preferred the idea of expansions over DLCs, and would rather pay a higher one-time fee, than a dozen small ones that in summary turn out to cost more and provide less.
And they do have a good precedent with it too, witcher 3 expansions were better content than core game, well worth the asking price. If this one is even half as good, I'm in.
For predominantly single-player games, I fully agree. Sell me a meaty expansion, don't trickle things out as little pieces of DLC.
I don't think the expansion model really works for multiplayer games though. You end up fracturing the community. It's why I think cosmetic microtransactions are a net positive, but only in the context of multiplayer. It's why games like Apex, Fortnite, and CSGO are not only still relevant, but actively updated and improved for so many years after their release.
MMOs have done expansions well. I personally wouldn't ever pay money for micro transaction cosmetics, but I will buy every decent expansion for an MMO I'm playing.
100%. Charge me what you think is a fair price for your content and I'll pay for it if I also agree that it's a fair price. I prefer to pay for a full game, and then pay for actual expansions. I will not buy a battlepass or pay for microtransactions, no matter what. Funny enough, if a game is free, I usually immediately write it off as likely MTX-filled nonsense, but if they throw a $70 price tag on it and don't add MTX, I'm more likely to play it. Maybe I'm just getting old, lol.
I think that there is a legitimate case for very small purchases. Like, I can legitimately imagine, oh, a multiplayer game where people want one specific outfit or something like that. Or even certain things in single-player. I would have been fine buying a la carte additional radio stations for Fallout 4, for example -- one area where I wish that more content was available. I would be happy getting some kind of pop rock station, but I have no interest in a country station. And I don't really want to buy $40 or whatever of even pop rock radio stations, the kind of amount that would be required for the price to reasonably reflect the kind of cost involved in putting something like that together for a larger DLC. Making players buy a larger bundle with things that they do not care about for the sake of avoiding microtransactions seems unreasonable.
That being said, I also think that microtransactions have been hugely overused, and often they are for things that are quite expensive relative to purchasing a larger bundle.
All that being said, I did generally like the "expansion" model that games used to have, and which seems to be less common now, so I'm certainly not complaining at all about the Cyberpunk 2077 model here.
Literally this. Even in older games journalism there was a difference between additional content and true expansions. We used to call developers out for labelling something as an expansion that didn't have enough additional content. This is pretty close to what full expansions used to cost ($20-25 is what I remember for something like Shadows of Amn), and the amount of additional content fits.
I think a lot of people are used to the incremental and constant content release for live services games that are generally free. More is not always better, though...and free is not always free lol.
If there was something that was incomplete about Cyberpunk, it was the stuff that they've done to the game up to this expansion that fixed problems it launched with. A game isn't incomplete just because they add more to it later.
I think additional content is fine, even if it's expanding the story. That's not super unusual even going back years ago to Baldurs Gate 2's expansion finishing the story, and is often referred to as a trilogy due to the expansion, or Lord of Destruction.
It sounds like the changes made to the base game will be implemented even if you don't buy this DLC which is good. Base game changes and improvements to AI shouldn't be sold separately.
This is one of the things I love about Paradox games, when they release expansions they always release a free big patch with them to include all the non-expansion stuff.
It's weird to me that people say it was ever unfinished (prev gen consoles aside) It was buggy and wasn't the life simulator nerds wanted but the story is among the best in video games and the game play is incredibly satisfying. While also having the best looking graphics of any game to date.
I don't get that. Cyberpunk is by no means perfect. But how is it not a complete game? I put in a ton of hours and thoroughly enjoyed it. Are you saying that because the AI was bad, it's incomplete? Cause very, very few games are complete if that's the benchmark we use.
It got over hyped, but capital G gamers did what they do best and blew it out of proportion as if someone kicked their baby.
Note: I played on PC several months after launch. Maybe it was incomplete when it came out, but it sure as hell ain't now.
The totality of those expansions in a lot of cases ended up costing $30 and having similar amounts of content. Dishonored had two story DLCs for $15 each, part 1 and part 2. So...that's $30. Yeah, if there's a controversy here, there shouldn't be.
A few of you noticed some information shared online by our publisher, KRAFTON 🕵
While some of the news is exciting, we’d like to clarify:
Early Access is not intended for release in 2024, but we plan to share a lot more information later this year!
In reference to “Games-as-a-Service,” we simply plan to continually update the game for many years to come, just like the previous two Subnautica games. Think our Early Access update model, expanded. No season passes. No battle passes. No subscription.
The game is not multiplayer-focused. Co-op will be an entirely optional way to play the game. You’ll be able to enjoy the game as a single-player.
As always, we are so proud and incredibly grateful to have such a passionate and engaged community, who love the Subnautica games deeply.
Thanks for keeping an eye out for any news about our progress on the next game.
We’re so excited to show you what we’ve been working on and hope that you love it as much as we do.
Honestly I haven’t even considered they would do multiplayer in the next one, but now that they mentioned it I’m fully expecting at least some paid cosmetics or some form of mtx, which is on par for the course as of late. My expectations are so low these days that I just hope they don’t pull any always-online or drm bullshit, so that the game can be preserved and modded.
Well, they failed to answer one more huge question when it comes to GaaS... Is it always online DRM?
On console platforms like the Switch, I can play Subnautica offline anywhere, and though the second game is likely far outside the switch's capabilities, I think DRM model is an important thing to clarify when it comes to GaaS definition.
They haven't fucked us over so far with DLC, MTX or any bullshit with their previous entries, so no reason to believe they will do here, they are very open with their development and talking to the community. So until they actually screw us over, it's unfair to pretend we are being.
It just sounds like a miscommunication/misuse of the term by KRAFTON, Unknown Worlds then came out to clarify. We will just have to wait and see, we can get actually angry once we know there's going to be some bullshit involved.
The only current downside to the next Subnautica is that it's going to be built on UE5, I just hope they manage to avoid all the shortcuts.
A lot of UE games are low performance or use shit features (like TAA). You can make something which "looks good" quickly with the engine and a lot of devs do just that instead of taking their time to tweak things for better performance or visual fidelity. So instead we get stuck with blurry messes.
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