The industry historically hasn’t shrunk when studios close like this. There just ends up being more bespoke studios all over the world with former developers from those studios.
I don’t think big companies know how to make a good FPS campaign anymore, let alone hone in on classic deathmatch multiplayer. The last FPS I bought was Half-Life: Alyx four years ago, and the first one to come along and interest me since then was Phantom Fury, but I’m letting that one iron out bugs for a few weeks before I...
I can think of plenty of games with writing I’ve really enjoyed in recent years, not the least of which is Baldur’s Gate 3 just last year, but FPSes in particular are in one of only a few genres where I haven’t been well served lately.
I would not agree with that, no. First because I’d say mechanics are almost always the most important part anyway, and also because I’ve probably come across more stories that have held my interest in recent years than I did 25 years ago. Stories were pretty basic back then, more often than not. In fact, these days, I’ve been carried through mediocre gameplay by well-told stories more than a few times, and I don’t think that ever happened 25 years ago.
Not exactly, but I have found a taste for loot games lately, so maybe someday I’ll get around to that one. It still wouldn’t scratch the same itch though.
It peaked today at just shy of 100k concurrent players following its successful early access period, with about 70k reviews, both of which are indicators that it’s selling extremely well, as well as taking the #4 spot on the top sellers list on Steam.
Fortunately there are enough people who value them more than you, because most games, even moderately budgeted ones, wouldn’t be able to sustain themselves at that price.
Let’s say that including benefits, a developer’s salary is about $100k. Maybe a small team of 8 people worked on a game like The Thaumaturge for 3 years. Before you even factor in contract work like voice acting, that would put the development budget at $2.4M. If the game cost $20, they’d have to sell about 120k copies to break even on that investment, which is far from guaranteed. By pricing the game at $35, their break even point is nearly half of that. This is a moderately budgeted game, not a AAA game with microtransactions.
Even an experienced team like Mimimi games, who made smart development choices by iterating on what they built before to keep costs down, releasing critical successes several times in a row, ended up closing down because the money coming in was too tight. Their games ranged from $30-$50 and had every sale, bundle, giveaway, and promotional opportunity you could think of.
Currently, mine just says it can’t connect to Steamworks and gets no further. Anyone else having that issue? I would expect the game to fall back to offline mode at least, but even with Steam in offline mode, I get the same error.
So Redfall was set up to fail, and you make those people fall on the sword, and then Hi-Fi Rush is a game people clearly want more of and could have stood to cost more than $30, and you let those people go too instead of hitting the ground running on a sequel? What is wrong with you, Microsoft?
Being after well received titles is congruent with their Game Pass strategy. Being after as much money as possible would mean they probably should have charged more than $30 for one of the best games of the year.
It’s still got the the 2 minute loop through a level like 1 and 2 but without the money mechanic of 2 and 4 (which I’d say its omission is an improvement). And while Tony Hawk games had to go somewhere after THPS3, I believe 4 is the one where they got rid of the 2 minute loop, which is where the series lost some of what made it so great, IMO. Plus, the levels were an appropriate amount of bananas, and it’s hard not to get hype doing tricks as Darth Maul while listening to “Ace of Spades”.
It highlights the crucial flaw with Tekken for me: you have to just memorize how to defend everything your opponents can do to you rather than being able to intuit it on the fly. Which moves hit high/medium/low/overhead or track horizontally? There’s no language to it; it’s just done on a per move basis for balancing reasons, which means it would take me forever to get to the part where I actually get to think and play the game. This string, mashing 3, has highs, mediums, and lows all built in, plus it low profiles some counter attacks from opponents. This bot would beat me, too.
Rumor has it that Yuzu and all of its derivatives violated the DMCA in a way that Ryujinx did not, in that Yuzu was allegedly developed inappropriately using proprietary information from Switch SDKs, where Ryujinx is doing it legit via “clean room” reverse engineering. So Ryujinx is likely safe, but anything using Yuzu code is legally poison.
Xbox Has Had More Studio Closures Than First Party Game Releases So Far In 2024 (twistedvoxel.com)
We've almost reached the end of the 1st half of 2024, and Xbox has had more studio closures than first party game releases in the year so far.
Perfect Dark Reboot Is Allegedly In Bad Shape (www.gamespot.com)
I don’t think big companies know how to make a good FPS campaign anymore, let alone hone in on classic deathmatch multiplayer. The last FPS I bought was Half-Life: Alyx four years ago, and the first one to come along and interest me since then was Phantom Fury, but I’m letting that one iron out bugs for a few weeks before I...
V Rising has launched out of Early Access! (steamcommunity.com)
V Rising 1.0 review: one of the slickest survival games gets even slicker (www.rockpapershotgun.com)
BREAKING: Microsoft has closed Redfall's Arkane Austin, HiFi Rush's Tango Gameworks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda. | IGN (twitter.com)
Activision rejected Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 in favour of supplementary Call of Duty work, it’s claimed (www.videogameschronicle.com)
A Tekken 8 streamer spent almost a week using a one-button mashing bot to prove that Eddy Gordo is as big a menace as ever (www.pcgamer.com)
That is honestly hilarious from a old, old used to play Tekken player.
Nintendo DMCAs Yuzu forks on GitHub (github.com)
Unsurprising move. People should’ve moved them elsewhere.