Gaming News

nix

Starting from scratch?!? Foooooook sake :mad:

Jerichoholic

Jesus, that was announced years ago.

Retr0gamer

Won't be out this year then!

Kirby

No other company would do that these days. They'd just release it even if it was substandard.

Nintendo may be backwards when it comes to certain things but you can never accuse them of not having good ethics and quality control.

What worries me a little is that the team at Retro that made Metroid Prime the incredible game it was.....have all left Retro. Them producing another gem is no sure thing due to this fact.

EoinHef

Blizzard would cancel a game if needs be.

Notorious

EoinHef wrote: »

Blizzard would cancel a game if needs be.

Sure even EA cancelled a Star Wars game last week. It was nearly 1.5 years in development. Companies know when to cut their losses.

I was surprised to see such honesty in the Metroid 4 announcement. I would've expected news like this to be hidden behind a story of a team change.

EoinHef

Notorious wrote: »

Sure even EA cancelled a Star Wars game last week. It was nearly 1.5 years in development. Companies know when to cut their losses.

I was surprised to see such honesty in the Metroid 4 announcement. I would've expected news like this to be hidden behind a story of a team change.

Very true,totally forgot EA did that last week.

Jerichoholic

Games are cancelled all the time. No need to spin this as Nintendo being great.

ERG89

Jerichoholic wrote:

Games are cancelled all the time. No need to spin this as Nintendo being great.

The opposite end is Microsoft who cancelled Scalebound which never left a great impression when shown & got panned for it.

Kirby

Jerichoholic wrote: »

Games are cancelled all the time. No need to spin this as Nintendo being great.

Games are cancelled all the time. This game wasn't cancelled. They started over because they weren't happy....costing themselves money. When does that ever happen? And when it does, when do they publicly announce it?

EoinHef wrote: »

Blizzard would cancel a game if needs be.

OLD blizzard would. New blizzard under activision certainly would not. Hardly any of the guys that made blizzard are left.

They spent millions of dollars on titan and when that wasn't working, they just released half the game anyway as Overwatch.

gizmo

Kirby wrote: »

Games are cancelled all the time. This game wasn't cancelled. They started over because they weren't happy....costing themselves money. When does that ever happen? And when it does, when do they publicly announce it?

Starting over and moving to a different studio? Not that often because it's a pretty unique circumstance thanks to the IP in question. Closest I can think of is the Splatterhouse reboot from 2010 when, amusingly enough in this context, Bandai Namco pulled BottleRocket from the project and brought it in-house. The full story behind that is quite a read.

Microsoft did cancel Scalebound, as ERG89 pointed out above, but would they have been in a rush to continue or even reboot the project at another studio? Is the IP worth so much to them that they really need a third person action-adventure game based in a world of dragons on their console? Or was most of the excitement for the project based around the fact it was being developed by Platinum with Kamiya directing?

As for why they don't admit it when projects don't work out, companies tend to not like admitting when they've ****ed up obviously. This is made worse in cases where they haven't even officially announced a title publicly yet....

Kirby wrote: »

OLD blizzard would. New blizzard under activision certainly would not. Hardly any of the guys that made blizzard are left.

They spent millions of dollars on titan and when that wasn't working, they just released half the game anyway as Overwatch.

Speaking of which, we know from interviews with current and former employees at the company that the Diablo team within "new" Blizzard were working on the next iteration in the franchise deemed a "Diablo take on Dark Souls" called Hades from 2014 until its cancellation in 2016. While a portion of the team moved onto the Rise of the Necromancer add-on for D3, the rest began work on a project called Fenris which is believed to be the current Diablo sequel planned, thankfully more of a true successor in the series.

As for Overwatch, we went through this a couple of months ago on this very thread coupled with interviews and footage with Jeff Kaplan - that's just not how the game came to be was released.

johnny_ultimate

Another great bit of behind the scenes reporting from Eurogamer, this time about the unholy cluster**** (that’s putting it mildly) at Starbreeze: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-01-28-the-fall-of-swedish-game-wonder-starbreeze

Insane amounts of money being spent on obviously insane investments. Hell of a story, albeit one that makes you feel incredibly sorry for the workers forced to endure massive amounts of crunch in support of doomed games.

CatInABox

Huh. Metro Exodus is now an Epic Store exclusive, although preorders on steam will be okay apparently.

Personally, I don't actually mind some competition to Steam, so this is fine with me, but I've never had a particular love for Steam, it's just another shop to me.

earthwormjack

CatInABox wrote: »

Huh. Metro Exodus is now an Epic Store exclusive, although preorders on steam will be okay apparently.

Personally, I don't actually mind some competition to Steam, so this is fine with me, but I've never had a particular love for Steam, it's just another shop to me.

The epic store isn't competition, paying to take a game off a competing store 2 weeks from release is bullsh*t.

The game has gone from a €35 price on 3rd party key sites to a €60 price on epics store while offering less features. Some competition.

Cordell

It's 40 on instant-gaming, but that price is highly irrelevant, competition wise... 3rd party key resellers are not competing with the digital distribution platforms.

Also, competition wise, there isn't any, not for us the consumers anyway 60 is the set price for AAA releases, and by the looks of it, any percentage saved by the publisher they will pocket it themselves rather than passing it to the customers.

CatInABox

Cordell wrote: »

It's 40 on instant-gaming, but that price is highly irrelevant, competition wise... 3rd party key resellers are not competing with the digital distribution platforms.

Also, competition wise, there isn't any, not for us the consumers anyway 60 is the set price for AAA releases, and by the looks of it, any percentage saved by the publisher they will pocket it themselves rather than passing it to the customers.

Except it's a tenner cheaper now on the Epic Store..... in the US. Once again, Europe gets shafted.

CatInABox

CatInABox wrote: »

Huh. Metro Exodus is now an Epic Store exclusive, although preorders on steam will be okay apparently.

Personally, I don't actually mind some competition to Steam, so this is fine with me, but I've never had a particular love for Steam, it's just another shop to me.

I'm not a fan of the steam interface and user experience. Competition can only be good and I'd have a lot of confidence in Epic to eventually come up with something top notch while still competing on price. Online stores are notoriously more expensive that b&m stores and it's all down to lack of competition.

I understand the argument that it's a nuisance having multiple launchers and most of us gamers tend to be a bit OCD when it comes to keeping our PC's clean and organised. What I like about the Microsoft store is that you can launch games independently and don't need a launcher. Maybe with enough people complaining the other stores will go that way too and then it doesn't matter where you bought the game.

Kiith

Competition is fine, but this is taking the piss. Store exclusivity should be done way before release, and pulling it from Steam two weeks before launch is bull****.

Deep Silver are going to lose money from this move.

Mitch Connor

Kiith wrote: »

Competition is fine, but this is taking the piss. Store exclusivity should be done way before release, and pulling it from Steam two weeks before launch is bull****.

Deep Silver are going to lose money from this move.

From a consumer point of view.... why?

The pre-orders are being honored and why does it matter to the consumer whether they buy it through Epic or Steam? Is there some weird loyalty to steam that would stop people from buying a game they want elsewhere or is there a tangible, significant, benefit that losing Steam makes it a 'no-buy' for people?

Aren't the cost splits on Epic better than on Steam as well, so if there is a potential loss of sales, it may (must be in Metro's opinion) be covered by the greater profit share.

TitianGerm

Kiith wrote: »

Competition is fine, but this is taking the piss. Store exclusivity should be done way before release, and pulling it from Steam two weeks before launch is bull****.

Deep Silver are going to lose money from this move.

If you were selling a game where would you sell it? Would you put it on Steam and give away a much larger portion of your revenue or Epic and make more money?

Look at it this way, if Spurs said we are only buying from the English market now would you be happy they are closing themselves off from great offers/players in Spain etc?

ERG89

Kiith wrote:

Deep Silver are going to lose money from this move.

Depends on how much they are being paid by Epic.

johnny_ultimate

TitianGerm wrote: »

Would you put it on Steam and give away a much larger portion of your revenue or Epic and make more money?

Also worth mentioning that Steam has basically allowed the growth of grey market key sites, over most of which questions remain about how much money developers / publishers are seeing from sales. The 'competition' they provide is artificial in many ways.

Personally, I think suspicion is due when a big corporation enters the playfield with a big pay cheque - in that sense, questions about Epic's tactics are justified. I'm sure the deals being done with Ubisoft, Deep Silver etc... aren't purely altruistic ones. Equally, when the Epic store was announced it's fair to say the response from developers I follow on social media was unanimously positive. We're not talking about AAA publishers here, but indie teams who've clearly long been looking for a real alternative to Steam.

Steam is great - I love its centralised library, its convenience, the various little extra features. Equally, though, I'd be far more inclined to buy a game where I knew developers were getting the best share of the sales. I was more than happy to pick up Hades on Epic (although to be fair I'd have picked that up anywhere else) but particularly glad to know Supergiant are getting the vast majority of that money.

There'll be plenty of things worth keeping an eye on when it comes to Epic - how well / badly they handle their gatekeeping (there's a place for curation compared to the anything goes wildlands of Steam, but needs to be handled carefully) and how their app evolves over the next while. We'll see, but there's definitely nothing stopping me picking up a game I want to play on Epic at the moment - and a better chunk for the developers would be pretty ****ing high when considering where I'd want to pick up any given game.

Varik

Competition isn't just consumer facing.

Retr0gamer

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Also worth mentioning that Steam has basically allowed the growth of grey market key sites, over most of which questions remain about how much money developers / publishers are seeing from sales. The 'competition' they provide is artificial in many ways.

I think developers need to take responsibility here. Steam codes are generated by the publisher, not Valve. If a dodgy seller is looking to bulk buy codes the publisher generates them not valve. And then it's the publishers problem if eastern European codes end up on cd key sites. If you want to control how many codes get out into the wild then sell them to reputable sellers only. If you sell codes to someone with a fraudulent credit card then figure out how to avoid bad debts. Cheap game codes are a result of the global market which is good for consumers.

TitianGerm

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Also worth mentioning that Steam has basically allowed the growth of grey market key sites, over most of which questions remain about how much money developers / publishers are seeing from sales. The 'competition' they provide is artificial in many ways.

Personally, I think suspicion is due when a big corporation enters the playfield with a big pay cheque - in that sense, questions about Epic's tactics are justified. I'm sure the deals being done with Ubisoft, Deep Silver etc... aren't purely altruistic ones. Equally, when the Epic store was announced it's fair to say the response from developers I follow on social media was unanimously positive. We're not talking about AAA publishers here, but indie teams who've clearly long been looking for a real alternative to Steam.

Steam is great - I love its centralised library, its convenience, the various little extra features. Equally, though, I'd be far more inclined to buy a game where I knew developers were getting the best share of the sales. I was more than happy to pick up Hades on Epic (although to be fair I'd have picked that up anywhere else) but particularly glad to know Supergiant are getting the vast majority of that money.

There'll be plenty of things worth keeping an eye on when it comes to Epic - how well / badly they handle their gatekeeping (there's a place for curation compared to the anything goes wildlands of Steam, but needs to be handled carefully) and how their app evolves over the next while. We'll see, but there's definitely nothing stopping me picking up a game I want to play on Epic at the moment - and a better chunk for the developers would be pretty ****ing high when considering where I'd want to pick up any given game.

Epic are looking for a way to spend all the Fortnite money. They are building their store to ensure different revenue streams for the future.

Dyr

Mitch Connor wrote: »

From a consumer point of view.... why?

Aren't the cost splits on Epic better than on Steam as well, so if there is a potential loss of sales, it may (must be in Metro's opinion) be covered by the greater profit share.

Walled gardens and paid exclusives are never in the consumers interest, competition on merit is.

Epic could build something that will compete with Steam for customers, instead they're building something that will force customers to use their platform. That's not competition, it's the opposite

EoinHef

The EPIC store currently offers no benefits,its literally a storefront DRM. No cloud saves,spotty back end,no forums,no workshop etc. Absolutely zero features,all you can do with it is buy the game from it.

In that sense steam has much more value adds. Surely that has to mean something to consumers? Its not just the hassle of having another icon as people always seem to suggest.

I can totally see why developers would want the extra cut from the epic store,but forgoing all those steam extras your community is used to could be alienating for some communties.

Imagine bohemia interactive made Arma 4 an epic store exclusive. After years of its mod scene being integrated into steam,that would be a disaster

It will be interesting to see how it handles day 1 of a big title like metro. I wonder will it just fall over with all those people downloading the game. Does it have an offline mode?

TitianGerm

Bambi wrote: »

Walled gardens and paid exclusives are never in the consumers interest, competition on merit is.

Epic could build something that will compete with Steam for customers, instead they're building something that will force customers to use their platform. That's not competition, it's the opposite

It's a matter of downloading another store. It's not like you need to buy a new PC to use the Epic Store.

Bambi

Bambi wrote: »

Walled gardens and paid exclusives are never in the consumers interest, competition on merit is.

Epic could build something that will compete with Steam for customers, instead they're building something that will force customers to use their platform. That's not competition, it's the opposite

They'll get there. I'm not a fan of exclusives (I would say that being primarily an Xbox gamer :-p) but I can see why it is necessary to get people over from Steam considering the loyalty people have to it.

Kiith

I don't like any sort of exclusivity for games on pc, especially when it's not first party games. Oculus do the same thing with their store, and it fractures the virtual market up badly.

And I'm not a big fan of Steam anymore, and they have some seriously ****ty business practices (not to mention HL3 :mad:), but i have very little faith that Epic will do anything to improve that. It's just adding yet another exclusive market to an already saturated area.

Steam, Uplay, Origin, Epic and GOG...have i forgotten any?

TitianGerm wrote: »

Look at it this way, if Spurs said we are only buying from the English market now would you be happy they are closing themselves off from great offers/players in Spain etc?

Would i be happy with Spurs buying a player? ****ing right i would :pac: