Game News 2.0

Mr Crispy

Just what Sony needed after the disastrous launch of Concord.

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1828840809590075742?t=dPDnwEo4NaS3aG3LMoTXHg&s=19

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1828841359719182350?t=7ozfDlWe5fRJku8Hexfclw&s=19

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1828841645623914656?t=NywsWIWE5dRZuaidQoFrNg&s=19

Barratt's scummy behaviour aside, Tom Henderson reckons Marathon is in real trouble. He didn't elaborate (yet) but described it as "cooked". If he's right, the entire Bungie acquisition has been a complete failure.

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122556248#Comment_122556248

Truth or dare... Jesus wept.

CastorTroy

Unfortunately for him, they chose truth.

SuperBowserWorld

Sony is on a losing streak with Bungie and Concord.

Maybe it'll be a kick in the ass for this madness of companies spending billions on same old same old first person shooters.

Honestly, first person shooters, are people not absolutely sick to death of them ?

Astro will save the day !

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558172#Comment_122558172

FPS games are great. Just play some of the recent boomer shooters to rediscover why they are good. It's poxy multiplayer shooters that we are all bored of. I'd love to play another Bungie single player fps like halo 3 or reach.

SuperBowserWorld

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558244#Comment_122558244

I did enjoy Doom 2016 or at least until my hands could no longer hold the XBox controller without pain. Doom 2016 was the end of XBox for me. Will grab it on PS5 when it's a few quid.

Cordell

Sorry you did what? Doom and controller don't belong in the same phase, they shouldn't even be in the same room.

McFly85

I don’t understand the business model of pouring millions in and trying to start big with live service games. I guess as projects they’re easy sells to the business as the promise is endless money if it goes right.

But it seems these types of games would work best as low/mid budget games with experimental or unique mechanics that doesn’t need thousands of players to start off. If it works they can scale it up, if it doesn’t they can move on without having lost too much money and having gained a bit of knowledge about the genre.

Seems companies want to skip over the growth bit though and go straight to millions of people giving them money every month, and when it doesn’t work it’s a complete disaster.

Mr Crispy

I wonder how Naughty Dog feel about Factions being cancelled (on Bungie's recommendation)? It's entirely anecdotal of course, but I see more appetite for something like that online rather than yet another hero shooter. Then again, Deadlock seems to be poised for success, so what do I know!?

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558503#Comment_122558503

It's always the same issue; a game gets insanely popular and profitable, other developers/publishers want a piece of that action and make their own version of that type of game, by the time they're ready to release that game the market has either cooled on those games, become oversaturated with those games, or most fans of those types of games already have the ones they're going to stick with, and then the new game dies a death.

And then it's the devs who take the hit because to the publisher, the game "failed to meet our expectations", a.k.a "failed to be Fortnite".

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558561#Comment_122558561

It must have been heartbreaking for that team to have all those years of work canned.

johnny_ultimate

A good point made on this week's Triple Click - one of the reasons Fortnite was able to pivot to battle royale so successfully when the trend emerged was because they had an existing game they applied the formula to quickly. Not exactly visionary, but meant they could capitalise swiftly and differentiate themselves from the pack.

When you have to spent a half decade or more building the game from scratch, you run into the situation where the trend you were chasing may well be over and done with.

johnny_ultimate

Also, Jason Schreier recently pushed back a little on the suggestion that it was all Bungie that led to the cancellation of Factions. While losing that amount of work must be undoubtedly very painful for the developers, I can also see the side that a single-player focused studio not getting stuck on the live service treadmill is a positive outcome in the end.

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1819080195321876984

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1819081914084458704

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558611#Comment_122558611

I wouldn't even give fortnite that much credit. When it launched it was kind of a bad version of the game it was aping.

PU Battlegrounds was the big battle Royale game at the time and top dog. The way to beat was to offer something different and fortnite went for the two lowest fruit. They took the formula of a games that cost 30 euros and made it F2P and also offered it on platforms where there was a market for battle Royale but battlegrounds had failed to launch on. And fair play to them, it was the right call. It was slapped together on an existing game engine.

But I wouldn't give fortnite credit for being different from the pack or innovating. It was free and was also on platforms that hadn't a battle Royale game first. It was a pretty bad version of battlegrounds initially but fair play to epic, they basically did what mcfly85 suggested. Launch a product into a gap in the market and then build that product from there. They made it into a more polished experience.

Zero-Cool

I just wish we could get Factions mp mode for TLOU 2 just like the version from the first game. An expanded standalone sounded awesome but since it was scrapped, attach a bare bones mode to the sequel. Boat might have sailed though.

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558869#Comment_122558869

That's precisely the point. It was opportunisitic and lacking in any innovation (other than going F2P), but it was quick and effective - hence making a failing game into the biggest in the world on the back of a trend. Act first, think later really.

Whereas spending 7-8 years and countless millions trying to ape Overwatch - well, even Overwatch itself has gone through quite the saga in that time, let alone the genre it kickstarted.

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558869#Comment_122558869

I think that's what JU meant; that Fortnite when it launched was a completely different game, but when it saw what PUBG was doing they were able to very quickly pivot to the same type of battle royale game and so had a huge headstart over most other companies who then wanted their own battle royale. Fortnite then became the leading battle royale while other companies were still trying to shave the corners off their square pegs so they'd go in the round hole. Then Epic were able to make it into such a moneymaker that even lootbox models started to be abandoned.

Mr Crispy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558926#Comment_122558926

Yeah, probably too late but I totally agree. If the standalone became too bloated, just pare it back and do what you know you're good at. Maybe it'll come with TLOU3, eh?

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122558929#Comment_122558929

That was one of the real shames of Overwatch 2. OW1 made a ridiculous amount of money in lootboxes and was really one of the main drivers of the lootbox model, and yet for OW2 the chance to probably keep making ridiculous amounts of money in lootboxes wasn't enough, because it wasn't "Fortnite" amounts of money. So the entire model of the game shifted to a Fortnite-esque battlepass system which just felt so unrewarding and grindy.

johnny_ultimate

Interesting development - Annapurna has signed up to co-finance Remedy's Control 2. Deal also apparently includes film / TV rights to Alan Wake and Control.

Probably the biggest name title Annapurna has signed up so far? They've largely been a positive force in the industry so hopefully that continues here. Going by the statement it seems Remedy will still be self-publishing the game.

https://www.remedygames.com/article/remedy-and-annapurna-announce-a-strategic-cooperation-agreement

Retr0gamer

Hey guys. Are you all fed up with all the news stories about game developer jobs getting cut once a game does badly?

Well here's something new, an entire studio losing nearly all its staff before the game is released:

https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1829327631525020026?t=tMYq2uRpRB8c1vk3nLKtlg&s=19

Apparently Visions of Mana is fantastic as well.

RedXIV

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122560925#Comment_122560925

Goddamn it, the game looked amazing, And I was planning to pick it up but might hold off now to protest

Penn

Hideaki Itsuno, director of the Devil May Cry and Dragons Dogma games, is leaving Capcom after 30 years

https://twitter.com/tomqe/status/1829814090942070886

Sadly I'm guessing this means we might never get a DMC6. It was a miracle we even got DMC5 at all and it was a brilliant return to form. Hoped it meant a resurgence of the franchise but without Itsuno I really fear it'll either never happen at all or will be DMC2 or DmC.

Dragons Dogma 2 looked like it did well for Capcom too (I enjoyed it for the most part but tired of it as it dragged on).

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122566179#Comment_122566179

Thats a big blow to Capcom. Everything that man has touched has been gold for Capcom... Well maybe not DMC2 but at least her redeem d himself after that.

johnny_ultimate

Of all the job losses headlines this year, this one is sadly the least surprising. There doesn’t seem to be much info about the scale of the layoffs beyond the QA department being halved.

https://www.eurogamer.net/rocksteady-hit-by-layoffs-after-suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league-underperforms

johnny_ultimate

Microsoft definitely seem to be having a few problems at the moment dealing with smaller developers / publishers. Seen this story picked up in quite a few places now - including from Jez Corden, who is very much on Microsoft’s side by default.

https://twitter.com/jezcorden/status/1830673522911269235?s=46&t=nwvJe3fJtU0siJ7wj5mjTA

https://twitter.com/jezcorden/status/1830791480505446908?s=46&t=nwvJe3fJtU0siJ7wj5mjTA

Penn

Yeah if it was one game/dev having an issue, you'd chalk it up to just something getting lost in the process slowing things down. When it starts happening to more, it's likely to be the process itself.

Retr0gamer

European developer so seems serious. I get the feeling XBox is being run from too high up with people that are completely clueless about the industry unlike when it was run close to the ground. Big corporate interference it seems and they are really **** the bed.

Wouldn't be surprised if they replaced the entire customer support with a machine learning chatbot.

recyclops

Yeah thats a shocking look for MS, they are going all in on copilot and AI etc but if a company wants to do business with your and at a basic level you cant even reply thats woeful

johnny_ultimate

Wow. Concord bombed so hard Sony’s already pulling it from sale and refunding all purchases. What a shitshow. That’s a flop on a pretty unprecedented scale?

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1831000736546570665?s=46&t=nwvJe3fJtU0siJ7wj5mjTA

Mr Crispy

Yikes. You'd have to fear for the staff at Firewalk now.

Penn

Christ.... I was pretty sure it'd end up switching to a free to play model in a few months, but seems like the launch went so bad that they have to pull it from sale and refund people because it'll go F2P so much earlier that they can't justify just giving people who paid for it some bonus skins and stuff. Either that or they just really don't know what to do with game.

Either way, it's a very severe and drastic move.

Cordell

it's a very severe and drastic move

…but also honest and fair.

MikeRyan87

Seriously unprecedented.

Surely they will just work on it for 6 months to a year and then release it on PS Plus?

Bungie has a lot to answer for greenlighting this and cancelling The Last of Us Online for not being "sticky enough".

Penn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122578999#Comment_122578999

Yeah I can't actually fault them for the decision, especially if it does going to end up F2P. Better to refund everyone, prevent more sales, and focus on trying their best to relaunch the game without also trying to cater for people still playing.

Can't argue with Tamoor Hussain's take.

https://twitter.com/tamoorh/status/1831002954075381830?s=19

https://twitter.com/tamoorh/status/1831004452222050489?s=19

Cordell

F2P it's not free either, it still costs a lot to provide the service, and this doesn't look like a game that could do well.

johnny_ultimate

TBH I wouldn’t be surprised if they just decided to cut their losses entirely given the noxious aura around the game, but a F2P attempt does seem most likely. Not something that can be done quickly though with a AAA game, so I’m sure it’d be at least a few months until that happens. But again, in that context, could easily see Sony thinking that ongoing outlay isn’t worth it.

What a sad waste of work and resources - I hope at least the staff don’t bare the brunt of the fallout here and get a chance to redeem the game, but I’d be surprised if we don’t hear of job cuts or even a studio closure soon.

It’s wild looking at the animated trailers for the game and imagining how much more interesting the game itself would be if it simply looked more like this rather than the bland art design in the game itself. Even more interesting art (while hardly an insignificant undertaking) would be a hook the game sorely needed.

https://youtu.be/mXgV18YWq20?si=ZWG8cvzkEKOUwcm7

sniper_samurai

In other news Capcom will be releasing their 2 new fighting game collections on Xbox One next year after "technical" discussions with Microsoft.

https://twitter.com/CapcomUSA_/status/1830984496260219001?t=OYMAYYIjAfm3mQmco__8BQ&s=19

The issue here is that the current combined Xbox One/Series SDK doesn't support the old MT Framework engine, that Capcom regularly used on the Xbox 360 and later classic ports to Xbox One, that these games run on meaning they can't currently be ported.

This is also the reason why there is no native PS5 version.

Exclamation Marc

I'd be surprised if we saw the game again.

Those who bought it in this tranche, who were interested in the game, will move on. Those who were partially interested but didn't buy it will see it as a busted flush.

And those who had no interest will likely be further uninterested.

I feel really bad for the teams involved but this game was doomed from the outset.

CastorTroy

Wonder will they still be releasing the shorts. I'm sure they have ones sitting completed. Then there's the one in that new series on Amazon.

sniper_samurai

The first trailer for the Minecraft movie was just released.

https://twitter.com/Minecraft/status/1831316433663390067?t=FxZadmptP6zTrgurE4kIPA&s=19

johnny_ultimate

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122581536#Comment_122581536

Well that's one of the ugliest looking trailers I've ever seen.

Retr0gamer

Jack Black sold out on Tenacious D for this.

sniper_samurai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122581583#Comment_122581583

Well WBD need some excuse to end up vaulting it for a tax write off.

johnny_ultimate

Just to follow up on yesterday's story, it seems the Enotria / Xbox situation has been resolved after 'Phil Spencer and his team' contacted the devs directly. Probably shouldn't have taken a controversy to get to this point, but a positive outcome for the devs nonetheless.

https://twitter.com/enotriagame/status/1831359412897976811

OptimusTractor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122581840#Comment_122581840

€10 says he crafts an axe and calls it the Pick of Destiny.

sniper_samurai

Pretty much sums up Sonys week.

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1831687308510175262?t=k-FcoqErT1gUOjJVEBuIow&s=19

johnny_ultimate

It should be illegal to put a game this addictive on mobile phones. But by god are they leaning into it.

https://twitter.com/BalatroGame/status/1831695226886300045

CastorTroy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122585737#Comment_122585737

What's the game in the niche genre?

Exclamation Marc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122585922#Comment_122585922

Astro...